“[The AERA] will prevent federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, facilitate the expansion of domestic refining capacity, improve processes to develop energy infrastructure, stop EPA overreach and its war on coal, force Congress and the President to approve any new EPA regulations that kill jobs, broaden energy development on federal land, open offshore exploration, expand U.S. energy exports, and dedicate additional revenues to debt reduction.”
“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change,” wrote Milton Friedman in the 4oth anniversary of his classic Capitalism & Freedom (1962, 2002). The revered free-market economist continued:
…When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
“Hansen has distain for all-hat, no-cattle renewables, was the subject of two recent MasterResource posts: Is the Environmental Movement Net CO2 Positive? (James Hansen wants to know) and Energy Realism Amid Climate Alarmism: James Hansen Rides Again. It is nuclear or bust, if it is not already bust, according to Hansen’s energy math.” – Robert Bradley, “Game, Set, Match Fossil Fuels? James Hansen Sleepless in Ningbo,” March 13, 2014.
James Hansen continues to speak energy truth to Environmental Power about the primary of fossil fuels; the need for affordable, plentiful, reliable energy; and the dead-end, the distraction, of renewable-energy forcing and mandated energy conservation. Here are some contributions to the energy reality debate from his March 13th testimony at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing, Keystone XL and the National Interest Determination:
…“I am sorry that we scientists have not done an adequate job of communicating energy facts.”
“Recent events have been spiraling down so rapidly that I find it hard to sleep. Ex-President Clinton campaigns for a huge pipeline to carry Canadian tar sands…. Dogged insistence by environmental groups that intermittent renewable energies are the only alternative to fossil fuels.…”
Writing from China earlier this week, and no doubt preparing his testimony for Thursday’s “Keystone XL and the National Interest Determination” hearing in Washington before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, climate scientist/policy activist James Hansen has once again laid bare the internal contradictions of Big Green’s codependency on dilute ‘green’.
In his missive Sleepless in Ningbo, Dr. Hansen described how the Chinese authorities during a tour of the country’s renewable projects gave him some sobering news. China’s energy pie is divided into 78% coal, 12% gas, 7% oil, and 3% renewables.…