The Consequences Of Going Green

The following post appeared on Twitter on Sunday:

Green energy is a great theory. However, in extreme conditions, it may not be useful and may even result in death. Let’s balance windmills and solar panels with reliable backup energy sources so that people can stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

What Did He Actually Do?

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted a list of accomplishments of President Trump. The list is divided into categories. Please follow the link to the article to read the entire list, but I will list a few highlights.

Under the category of jobs and the economy:

  • Passage of the tax reform bill providing $5.5 billion in cuts and repealing the Obamacare mandate.
  • Increase of the GDP above 3 percent.
  • Creation of 1.7 million new jobs, cutting unemployment to 4.1 percent.
  • Saw the Dow Jones reach record highs.
  • A rebound in economic confidence to a 17-year high.
  • A new executive order to boost apprenticeships.
  • A move to boost computer sciences in Education Department programs.
  • Prioritizing women-owned businesses for some $500 million in SBA loans.

Under Killing job-stifling regulations:

  • Made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
  • Opened up the North American Free Trade Agreement for talks to better the deal for the U.S.
  • Worked to bring companies back to the U.S., and companies like Toyota, Mazda, Broadcom Limited, and Foxconn announced plans to open U.S. plants.
  • Worked to promote the sale of U.S products abroad.
  • Made enforcement of U.S. trade laws, especially those that involve national security, a priority.
  • Ended Obama’s deal with Cuba.

Under Boosting U.S. energy dominance:

  • The Department of Interior, which has led the way in cutting regulations, opened plans to lease 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.
  • Trump traveled the world to promote the sale and use of U.S. energy.
  • Expanded energy infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline snubbed by Obama.
  • Ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
  • EPA is reconsidering Obama rules on methane emissions.

Much of this has gone unreported. Please follow the link to the article to see the entire list.

An Opportunity Lost

Breitbart.com is reporting today that the Canadian government has approved plans for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, which will move 600,000 barrels a day of Alberta oil to the pacific coast town of Kitimat, British Columbia, where a new state-of-the-art super tanker port facility will be built to ship the oil to thirsty Asian ports. Obviously, this will create a large number of jobs for Canadians. I don’t begrudge the Canadians the economic boom that will be the result of this decision, but it is frustrating to me that America had the first chance to enjoy the economic boom the Keystone XL Pipeline would have brought. That chance is gone, and the oil will be used to build the Canadian and Chinese economies instead of the American economy. The environmental impact is no less than it would have been if America built the Keystone Pipeline, but because of President Obama’s continuing putting off of the project, America has lost the opportunity to have a reliable energy source close to home.

The article reports:

Rather than purchasing crude from a friendly and allied neighbor, the United States will most likely need to continue its reliance upon hostile sources like Venezuela. Energy analysts had hoped that construction of Keystone could have replaced almost half of the current U.S. daily crude purchases from that volatile, anti-American dictatorship, depriving Venezuela of the resources it relies upon to stay in power and fund its Cuban allies. 

Refusal to approve Keystone has forced suppliers to deliver their flammable crude via thousands of trucks and railcars traveling on America’s highways and railroads, rather than in a pipeline.  

The negative economic growth in the first quarter of 2014 is not the result of weather–it is the result of the bad economic policies of the Obama Administration. We need a Congress with the backbone to institute good economic policies regardless of what the President does.

If The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Scream About It, It Didn’t Happen

In April of this year, I noted the differences in coverage the media gave to two stories regarding oil spills (rightwinggranny.com). One story involved a pipe leak and one story involved a train derailment. The train spill was three times the size of the pipe leak, but because it wasn’t a pipe leak and would not feed into the narrative of the anti-Keystone Pipeline sentiment, the train leak was not widely covered.

Today, the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page (I am not including a link–the article is subscribers only) notes that the Saturday explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, of a train carrying North Dakota shale oil will probably not get a lot of extended coverage.

The article in the Wall Street Journal reminds us:

The reason oil is moved on trains from places like North Dakota and Alberta is because there aren’t enough pipelines to carry it. The provincial governments of Alberta and New Brunswick are talking about building a pipeline to cover the 3,000-odd mile distance. But last month President Obama put the future of the Keystone XL pipeline again in doubt, telling a Georgetown University audience “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

Did the explosion at Lac-Megantic not significantly exacerbate the problem of pollution, carbon or otherwise?

The article points out that there is about half as much oil spilled from pipelines as railroads on a gallon-per-mile basis. Pipelines tend to be away from populated areas–railroads tend to run through populated areas. Common sense would choose pipelines over railroads for both safety and pollution reasons.

The other aspect of the Keystone pipeline debate is the money. As long as there is no pipeline, Burlington Northern Santa Fe will continue to move shale oil to its destination. Burlington Northern Santa Fe is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Obama supporter and Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett.

Environmentalists are being taken for a ride by the very people (Obama supporters) that they consider their allies in the fight to ‘save’ the environment. Amazing.

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It Isn’t Legally Binding–But It Was A Good Vote

Yesterday Politico reported on a vote taken in the U. S. Senate to endorse the Keystone XL pipeline. The vote, 62-37, is symbolic, but it does put pressure on President Obama to approve the pipeline.

The article states:

Senators also resoundingly defeated, 33-66, an amendment from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that called for “expeditiously analyzing and making decisions” on the pipeline project. Boxer’s proposal included a long list of criteria for the review, including whether the pipeline would increase oil prices, use materials not manufactured in the U.S., affect individual property rights and otherwise “adversely [affect] job creation” and national security.

“Both of these votes make it very clear that the Senate will approve this project if the president doesn’t,” Hoeven (R-N.D.) boasted to reporters afterward.

The vote is non-binding, but the article notes that the 62-37 vote is filibuster-proof.

The article also reminds us:

Republicans marked the anniversary (the one-year anniversary of Obama’s speech at a TransCanada pipe storage yard near Cushing, Okla., where he called for making it a “priority” to expedite approval of Keystone XL’s southern leg) by poking Obama for failing to approve Keystone’s northern portion, which would bring crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands into the U.S.

“If you recall, the president held a photo op last year to tout his support for the southern part of that pipeline,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a video his office released Friday morning. “The only problem was that section didn’t need his approval. He had nothing to do with it.”

At least some Democrats are willing to put jobs and the American economy above party politics.

The Real Cost Of President Obama’s Not Approving the Keystone Pipeline

Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about the repercussions of President Obama’s delay in approving the Keystone Pipeline. It looks as if the delay may result in the pipeline not only not being built now–if the delay continues, it may not be built at all.

The article reports:

 Prime Minister Stephen Harper will travel to China next month to discuss selling Canada’s bounty to the rapidly growing nation.

The preferred initial plan was to build the $7 billion Keystone pipeline to deliver Alberta’s oilsands crude to refineries in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.

Harper reasoned that the U.S. government would prefer to deal with a friendly neighbor to help meet its energy needs while creating thousands of jobs.

With widespread opposition by U.S. environmentalists, the Obama administration has delayed its decision on whether to approve the project proposed by energy giant TransCanada Pipelines.

The new plan would market to China and Asian countries through the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport Alberta’s oil and natural gas to British Columbia for shipment by tankers.

From a strategic point of view, this is a nightmare. We are depriving ourselves of a friendly source of oil and sending that oil to someone who is building a strong military and who is not a friend. Congress needs to make sure that when the ‘Payroll Tax Cut’ comes up for debate again before February (when it is due to expire) that a significant amount of pressure is put on the President to approve this pipeline. One of the ways that pressure could be applied would be to make sure all Americans paying more at the gas pump understood that the pipeline would eventually give us cheaper gasoline. The Republicans (and the unions) need to be more effective in getting the message out that we need this pipeline.

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Putting Elections Ahead Of Creating Jobs

Truck Hauling 36-Inch Pipe To Build Keystone X...

Image via Wikipedia

The Keystone Pipeline is a $7 billion pipeline, which would run from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.  It would increase energy security in America and directly create more than 20,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs and construction jobs in 2011-2012 across the U.S.

Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the U. S. Government is planning to delay any decision as to whether to allow the pipeline to be constructed until after the 2012 election. They didn’t exactly word it that way, but that is the outcome.

The article states:

State Department officials are expected to say as early as Thursday the U.S. will seek to re-route the pipeline away from an environmentally sensitive portion of Nebraska. Such a move will require an assessment of the new route’s environmental impact, a lengthy process that isn’t expected to be complete until at least the first quarter of 2013.

The problem this pipeline presents for the Obama administration is simple–the environmentalists oppose the pipeline and the unions support it (more jobs). The pipeline would increase the energy independence of America and make us less dependent on oil from countries that hate us.

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