Tag Archives: Sierra Club

Those Pesky Fact-Checkers

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In his latest comments on the Keystone Pipeline, President Obama claimed that the Pipeline would create approximately 2,000 jobs during construction and later approximately 50 and 100 jobs. Doesn’t sound like much, does it?

The Daily Caller fact-checkers reviewed those statements in an article posted on Wednesday.

The article quotes the White House response when asked about these numbers:

“There are a range of estimates out there about the economic impact of the pipeline,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “What the president is interested in doing is draining the politics out of this debate and evaluating this project on the merits.”

The State Department reported that the pipeline would directly create 3,900 jobs per year, and 42,100 jobs if indirect jobs are included. Even the Sierra Club, one of the leading groups campaigning against the pipeline cites the 3,900 jobs figure — higher than the president’s unsupported numbers.

The only estimate that even comes close to what President Obama claimed was one done by the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations Global Labor Institute, which opposes the pipeline.

The thing to note here is that the Pipeline would create jobs. America desperately needs jobs. Aside from the concept of energy independence and national security, it might be a really good idea to build the Keystone Pipeline, but meanwhile Warren Buffett‘s railroad is earning millions hauling the oil by rail. Notice, the oil will travel. The question is how it will travel and where it will travel. If America stalls on approving the pipeline long enough, the oil will travel by a new pipeline across Canada to a seaport where it will be shipped to China. It is not in America’s interest to oppose the Keystone Pipeline.

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President Obama’s War On Domestic Energy Production

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On Thursday, Forbes Magazine posted an article about the energy policy of the Obama Administration. The article uses the term ‘mean green’ to describe the President’s policies.

The article reports:

You know who the “mean greens” are. They are those curmudgeonly misanthropes who begrudge and bewail humankind’s economic progress and the high standards of living attained in the modern era.

The article reminds us of one of President Obama’s statements on life in America:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes, you know, 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that every other country is going to say OK … [when we] keep using 25 percent of the world’s energy.”

It’s interesting that the President who made that statement has no problem doing those things. It’s another case of “rules for thee, but not for me.”

Some of the facts included in the article:

Chu’s (Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy) most famous policy goal is encapsulated in his statement, “Somehow we have to figure out a way to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

In his first week as president, Obama rescinded a Bush executive order that permitted drilling on the continental shelf. A few weeks later, Salazar unilaterally canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah.

Team Obama continued the assault on domestic oil development, first by adding two million more acres to the 107 million acres of designated wilderness to block the extraction of fossil fuels from those tracts.

EPA regulations already have triggered the announced closures of 175 coal-fired generators over the next few years, plus the cancellation of plans to build new, cleaner plants. Having wounded the coal industry and curbed domestic oil exploration.

…natural gas emits significantly less carbon dioxide than coal and oil, … the mean greens have declared war against natural gas. Obama’s allies in the Sierra Club have headed the public relations campaign, launching a plan that they call “Beyond Natural Gas.”

The Sierra report announces, “We’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.” More quietly, White House energy aide Heather Zichal followed up with an announcement this summer that Salazar’s Interior Department will unveil new rules regulating “fracking” sometime after the election.

Can America afford four more years of the Obama Administration? Note that the new rules regarding fracking will be announced sometime after the election.

 

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Following The Money In Environmentalism

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John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday about the war the Environmental Protection Agency is waging on coal-fired electric plants. The article includes the following quote from the Science and Environmental Policy Project’s The Week That Was:

On Thursday, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune admitted that between 2007 and 2010 the organization took $26 Million from Chesapeake Energy Corporation for the Sierra Club’s campaign against coal-fired electrical power plants. Chesapeake is one the nation’s largest producers of natural gas and extensively uses deep underground hydraulic fracturing “fracking” and sees its future in natural gas-fired power plants.

In making the announcement on the Sierra Club’s web site, Brune implied that it will be joining in the campaign against “fracking” for natural gas. No doubt, the leadership of Chesapeake Energy is elated to hear that the animal they fed so generously to use against their competitors may soon turn on them, probably using the same tactics it used against Chesapeake’s competitors in fuels to power electrical generation.

Follow the money. It is unfortunate that money is flowing and people and organizations are being used in ways that do not do anything to solve the energy problems of our country. The environmentalists are not any more righteous than the rest of us.

As I quoted in a previous article:

As the Forest Service used to say, the person who built his mountain cabin last year is an environmentalist. The person who wants to build one this year is a developer.

We all need to be aware of where our news on policy issues is coming from and who is paying for it!

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When Politics Is More Important The The Welfare Of Americans

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Steven Hayward at Power Line posted an article today about the decision by the Obama administration to delay the leasing of shale gas fields in Ohio. This is an attempt by the administration to win back the environmentalists who are not happy after President Obama decided not to change the current ozone rules. Evidently when Lisa P. Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was appointed she expected to rewrite those rules quickly–now she is being told that she will have to wait until 2013 if President Obama is reelected. That is something to keep in mind–rewriting the rules in the manner that Ms. Jackson would rewrite them would cripple America’s economy and greatly decrease our domestic energy supply.

The article at Power Line reports:

If you want to get a little more of an idea of the federal permitting problem, have a look at the embedded video on this Energy Information Administration squib about the Bakken field in North Dakota and Montana.  As you will see from the animation, the bulk of activity in the early years occurred in Montana, on some old federal leases, but in recent years those fields have started to tail off while North Dakota has boomed into the fourth largest oil-producing state in the country.  Most of the activity in North Dakota is occurring on private or state land (ditto for gas production in Pennsylvania), while new exploration and production in Montana has atrophied because of the fields there are mostly on federal land, and new areas are not being opened up.

America has the ability to meet its own domestic energy needs in an environmentally safe way. Right now government interference is preventing America from doing that. However, the tide may be changing.

The article at Power Line also reports:

Mr. Brune [the current executive director]  (of the Sierra Club) acknowledged that paid membership had declined by about 100,000 in recent years, to just more than 600,000, but attributed it to financial hardship caused by the recession.

It is important to protect the environment. It is also important to understand that civilization as we know it and a clean environment can co-exist. The next presidential election will determine whether civilization as we know it will continue to exist.

 

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