energy — VOICES for REASON

Last week I spoke at the 13th annual Energy & Environment Conference and Expo in Phoenix. This is one the largest events in the U.S. devoted to energy and environmental issues, with over 650 speakers and more than 2300 attendees.

Marketing slogan: “650 speakers tackle solutions for USA’s energy independence and reducing carbon emissions.” Well, make that 649, because the gist of my presentation was to argue against the “solutions” that every other speaker had to offer.

As I told the audience attending my panel session, I was there to make the case for not doing anything about climate change—or, more specifically, for not imposing a massive regime of government controls, regulations, or market interventions aimed at restricting greenhouse gases in the name of allegedly fighting climate change.

Mine was definitely the most controversial talk on my panel session. I was even attacked as a “denier” by one of my co-panelists, the executive director of the American Solar Energy Society. But there were a number of people in the audience who came up afterwards to thank me for presenting a contrarian view that they felt was badly needed at this conference.

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In my last post, I commented on how government central planning, being subject to shifting political agendas, makes long-range economic decision-making impossible. It’s worth looking at other examples of the chaos and market distortions that government intervention causes.

Consider the government’s support for alternative fuel vehicles, which—like the solar power plants in the Mojave desert—is driven purely by green ideology. It currently doesn’t make any technological or economic sense to try to replace the petroleum-powered internal combustion engine with currently existing alternative fuel technologies. (Just as it currently doesn’t make any sense to try to replace fossil-fueled or nuclear-powered electricity with solar or wind.) Nevertheless, the government is determined to do so.

In 2003, the Bush administration launched a 1.5 billion dollar initiative to subsidize the development of hydrogen cars—cars that use hydrogen instead of gasoline as their source of energy, producing water as their only emission.

Now, there are all kinds of reasons why hydrogen cars would never make it today on a free market. Critics cite legitimate safety concerns, the high cost of hydrogen fuel cell technologies, and the need for a huge, nationwide build-out of hydrogen refueling stations. Read the rest of this entry »

I have found learning the history of oil to be invaluable when looking at today’s controversies. For example, when watching Congress haul oil executives to Washington over gasoline prices that are “too high,” and calling for “investigations”—it is instructive to know that this practice has been going on since the 1920s. Or, when reading references to the oil embargo of the 1970s, along with the idea that it proves the necessity of “energy independence,” it is crucial to know what really happened and what America’s real mistake was.

As long as any of us have been alive, oil issues have dominated both domestic policy and foreign policy. Yet Americans have surprisingly little background knowledge about this coveted commodity. In an effort to educate people more about the oil industry and oil policy, ARC has just released my 3-lecture course, “The Triumph and Tragedy of the Oil Industry,” available online for free in MP3 format. The purpose of the course is to explain how today’s state of affairs in oil came to be—both the benefits and the problems associated with oil.

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Environmentalists claim, with ever-increasing hysteria, that our consumption of carbon-based energy in pursuit of prosperity and economic growth is altering the earth’s climate. Human survival, they insist, requires the immediate abandonment of fossil fuels, which provide more than 80 percent of the world’s energy, in favor of carbon-free sources.

Yet, at the same time, environmentalist groups have vehemently opposed, as unacceptable intrusions on nature, projects involving every alternative form of energy ever proposed to replace fossil fuels—including such supposedly green ventures as wind farms and solar power plants. Here’s the latest example:

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The Wall Street Journal recently reported on “small hydro” projects—hydroelectric power plants involving small dams on streams and tributaries, as opposed to giant dams on major rivers. Because hydro produces zero greenhouse gas emissions, these projects are being promoted by power companies hoping to avoid the fierce green opposition to carbon-based energy.

But environmentalists have also fiercely opposed hydro for decades, because massive dams flood large areas and dramatically alter waterways. (This list of Sierra Club “accomplishments” boasts of killing dam projects as far back as 1923.) The Journal story suggests that with small hydro, electricity producers are hoping to fly under the green radar by building smaller dams in remote locations.

The problem is that these hydro plants have a tiny generating capacity: Read the rest of this entry »

I my last post I mentioned Richard Lindzen’s keynote address at the Heartland Institute’s climate change conference. Another talk that I found especially interesting was the one by Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor from King Juan Carlos University in Spain. (Videos of this talk and most of the others are available at the conference website.)

Calzada is the lead author of a study that attacks the myth of economy-boosting “green jobs.” President Obama has cited Spain’s green energy initiatives as a model for the United States to follow. But Calzada and his colleagues argue that the Spanish programs have been an economy-killing disaster, with more than two jobs lost for every “green job” siphoned from the market economy through taxation.

It is completely bizarre for the Obama administration to hold up this job-destroying program as a curative for an economy that’s already on the ropes due to massive government intervention in finance, health care, and energy. If Obama finds any more ways like these to “boost” the economy, it won’t be long before we have no economy left.

What is the biggest danger to Americans’ health and welfare? No, it’s not global warming — but it may well be global warming policy. In the name of fighting off hypothetical rises in average global temperature, our government has given itself draconian power to throttle energy sources that emits CO2 — which means, well over 80% of American production.

The first step was the Supreme Court’s decision last year that carbon dioxide, which every human breath produces and every green plant eats for breakfast, is a “pollutant” — and therefore subject to potentially unlimited control by the EPA. Now, the Obama EPA has announced that it plans to use its newfound power to the fullest.

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My speaking event with Willie Soon went off well. This is the third panel event we have done together and I expect we’ll continue to do them as opportunities arise.

Willie gave an excellent presentation that focused on debunking the claim that atmospheric carbon dioxide is the dominant driver of changes to the Earth’s climate.

I argued that the real threat we face is not the threat of becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate disasters, but the threat of coercive political policies aimed at cutting off our access to cheap, abundant energy. I also presented some basic facts concerning current energy consumption and the inadequacies of so-called green energy sources to supply our energy needs.

During the Q&A, I was challenged on the latter point by a student claiming that by covering the land area adjacent to American’s freeways with solar cells, one could produce enough electricity to meet America’s current demand.

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The economic pain we’re all feeling right now is nothing compared to the pain we would feel if we adopt green energy and climate policies that restrict fossil fuel consumption.

There is a close relationship between the use of energy and a healthy economy, as highlighted by this New York Times story, “Oil Demand Down; 1st Time Since ‘83.”

Global oil consumption will drop this year for the first time since 1983, as an economic downturn in the West and slower growth in China cut fuel demand…

The International Energy Agency, an adviser to industrialized nations, said on Thursday that it projects worldwide demand to fall by 200,000 barrels a day, to 85.8 million barrels a day, in 2008….

The Energy Department said earlier this week that global consumption would probably fall by 450,000 barrels a day in 2009, the first time in more than 30 years that demand will decline for two consecutive years.

Energy is the motive power that fuels production and trade. When economic activity slows, so does energy demand. But what people really need to recognize is that it goes the other way too. Imposing restrictions on the use of energy–as would occur under a system of carbon regulation–would choke off the economy’s fuel and shut down productive activity.

For one thing, a recession is a temporary downturn; we can expect that once the economy picks up again, producers will increase their demand for energy toward renewed growth and prosperity. Also, nobody sets out to cause a recession. There’s no excuse for the devastation wreaked by the political leaders, Fed Chiefs, and sundry economic Czars and bureaucrats who caused our current mess, but one can, at the very least, assume they didn’t intend to ruin the economy. But if we voluntarily adopt green policies that force cutbacks in energy, the result would be a self-inflicted depression–or worse–that would cause economic pain for as long as the policies are in place.

This recession, with all its grim news of job loss and economic hardship, should be seen as a cautionary tale against coercive energy and climate policies.