Subtitle: After Gutenberg: Laughably Apocalyptic
After 1) stripping out the tax changes that would rescind subsidies to the oil companies and use the savings to fund investment in renewable energy sources and 2) again killing a federal mandated, Renewable energy Portfolio Standard, the bill easily passed 86-8 in the Senate, demonstrating without a doubt what is important to the Senate.
And, the House had the same need to be seen as green, while taking care of business in every way. The Energy Bill passed handily, 314-to-100.
God, bless the Emperor
Fossil Fuels that I love.
Reuters quotes House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as stating the bill was “a historic turning point in America’s energy policy,” because it moves the United States away from its addiction to traditional oil, most of which must be imported, to home-grown renewable energy supplies and promotes energy conservation.
“With this legislation,” said Hoyer, “we will move toward real energy independence that results in a stronger economy.” Those advocates, who were monitoring the policy making, at least, those not dumbstruck by how dirty it got, discovered that it was too late to change the momentum that led to its passage.
For instance, It’s Getting Hot in Here participant Mike Ewall had noted that “what started off as a combination of decent and dirty policies is losing some of its better aspects and picking up dirtier ones.”
Support for clean, renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar were ripped out while the main dirty aspects remained present, to include massive support for inefficient corn-to-ethanol, support for dirtier coal to liquid fuel, and expansion of a nuclear industry liability cap.
Since 1970 carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from U.S. vehicles have gone up 73 percent. Automakers are not doing enough to reduce carbon pollution.
Congress can seem tough by pointing to the fact that the energy bill they passed requires a 35 mpg CAFE by 2020. Of course, there will be those naysayers who will say that even this “triumph” is short shrift.
Who needs solar, geothermal, or wind power if your truck can get 22.2 mpg? Never mind the average light duty vehicle gets 21.6 mpg right now.
Hell, over in Paris, according to the International Energy Agency, the average fuel consumption is 32.1 mpg. But, by golly, we’re Americans, we like our fries honky-tonk style and we certainly don’t need to learn from Europe.
That would be utterly foolish. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing big oil wasn’t getting the tax breaks they deserve, and, ye gods, even worse, the car in my driveway was a diesel powered European Ford Focus that ticks off 46 miles per gallon.
Why would I drive that when the new energy bill says I won’t have to get 35 mpg until 2020? Wow, talk about progress…
Mr. House Democratic Majority Leader, is it true that addicts will commit crimes to support their addiction without regard for whom those crimes might harm?”
Yes, the bill was “a historic turning point”, not because it confronted the direction that the United States continues to take. Congress has chosen to ignore the advice that there still may be time to stop the worst of climate change, which will have disastrous consequence for the American people as well as other populations throughout the world.
The energy bill passed by Congress defeats a goal for survival of life as we know if on the planet, a goal which climate scientists now explain with a set of simple numbers — “2 and 445″ and “25 to 40″.
That’s 2 degrees Celsius, 445 parts per million of carbon dioxide, and a 25-to-40-percent reduction in global-warming gases — a formula, some say, to save the planet from climate change’s severest consequences.
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Rather the bill may become “a historic turning point”, when it becomes evident to our youth concerned with the future of their world that the established power structure is willing to sell out. It is evident that United States Congress, despite the knowledge that they have, will continue to act counter to the interests of the global community.
No one has “done an intervention with” Steny Hoyer. The rhetoric is nice, and it is evident that Congress is indisposed toward action of sufficient import. While people can remain stuck in a Contemplation Stage for long periods of time, we lack the time.
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Jesse Jenkins reports that Focus the Nation teams “have invited more than 100 members of the House and Senate to come to their campuses and discuss global warming solutions. That means about 400 of them still need to hear from you.”
Also, in reaction to passage of the dirty energy bill, JJ notes:
I am glad that he avoided adding “you farking retards”. That would have been totally unprofessional.
Scott Sklar:
“Right now,” he goes on to note, “the monied interests are framing the debate and the country is losing.”
Country, fuels from hell, Scott, try life as we know it on the planet.
O.K., now try saying it without frothing at the mouth, so much.
Better, again.
Scott Sklar believes that Senator Harry Reid was right on target when he stated, “Today, America consumes 21 million barrels every single day, most of it from unstable regions of the world. That’s one billion American dollars going overseas — every day — to pay for our oil addiction. Those 21 million barrels we will use today — and the 21 million-plus barrels more we’ll use tomorrow — has created a three-pronged crisis: It threatens our economy, our national security and our environment.”
The common ground was security, yet what is so insane is their ignoring the warning from their security experts that climate change will cause significant destabilization.
Gristmill contributor Ken Ward provides another testy analysis. Well, not as testy as Joseph Romm can be, mind you, but testy nonetheless. Ward asks, “Have we lost more ground than we gained?”
SMH photo: Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in Sydney.
“Celebrity physicist Karl Kruszelnicki has described clean coal as a ‘complete furphy’ and likened it to Nazi propaganda.”
The first ghost took reddit commentator orthogonality into the past:
Jesse Jenkins visualizes “what it must have said on the holiday card delivered today by the White House to ExxonMobil executives along with a nice, fat, $10.3 billion check.”
Key milestones in the price of crude oil since 1970.
On Wednesday, reports RTE, the price of a barrel of light sweet crude, the benchmark oil price in New York, broke through $100 for the first time.
- 1970: The official price of Saudi crude oil is fixed at $1.80 a barrel.
37 years… 37 years… Hey, isn’t that about the time between increases in the Corporate Average Fuel Standards?
For comparison, Fin Facts tells us that the price was at $10.72 in December 1998. At $100 a barre, the price is close to 1980 all-time real dollar high. Oil rose almost 58% last year, the biggest annual gain this decade.
The MSNBC spin is that analysts still “don’t expect record-high prices by themselves to send the economy into recession. Expensive as oil is, energy doesn’t consume as big a chunk of Americans’ budget as it did decades ago.” OTOH, “lower-income families feel the effects of price increases most dramatically. With heating oil costs expected to jump 33 percent this winter, according to the Energy Department, families who rely on heating oil will have less money to spend on other things.”
Speaking of “Laughably Apocalyptic”, at his blog, The Long Tailpipe, Shai Agassi has some sobering information:
On Jan 3rd 2008 the cost of importing oil to the US was $1.3B a day – roughly 2 weeks worth of oil in 1999 – and if the price point stays where it is the US will see another $500B disappearing from its trade balance in 2008. (My emphasis)
Adding in the cost of subsidies for the domestic oil industry, the delivery and refining costs of gasoline, the healthcare cost of using it, and the cost of securing oil sources around the world and we are looking at probably the same amount in “externalities” of oil which the US budget loses every year. The combined sum is a staggering ANNUAL Trillion US dollars – roughly the Chinese federal cash reserve.
Oil, we found out, is neither cheap nor abundant. It is dwindling and [increasingly] hard to extract. The issue at hand is not whether we have enough reserves, but rather whether we have enough of a pipe out of the current reserves to feed the global addiction.
We have moved from supply side constraints to demand based pricing. As another oil expert explained to me we are at the mid point of oil prices as they move from an equilibrium at $50/bbl to a new level at $150/bbl.
He had a chilling analysis for the two sides of the oil price spectrum. “…At $50/bbl governments invest in demand; At $150/bbl they secure supply…”. I see that statement as one of the most profound statements I had heard about the oil market and the role government plays in it.
We have to put our money into easing demand before it is too late. Addicts who wait for the crisis do not recover in the same shape as they were before a stroke or heart attack hit them.
In the world of oil a heart attack is a global recession, and a stroke is probably global war. We can’t afford either. Only solution to addiction is drying up on the substance.
We may be too late, but we still need to try – putting more money into oil without putting any money into oil independence will make us dream of days when oil was cheap and abundant – at only $100 a barrel.
The Biopact team relays a warning from one of Europe’s leading economic institutes, DIW (Deutsches Institute für Wirtschaftsforschung).
Because life on the planet as we know it won’t be worth living without Monday Night Football.
Reuters reports that President Bush says it is on with the show.
An editorial in the NYTimes is refreshingly honest after the fact:
Well, except for the “admirable energy bill” part, that is.
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