To: Abraham Lincoln
From: Sherman Johnson, National Bovine Resources Defense Council; Harris Rutherford, Cowpeace International; William Oaks, Prairie Defense Fund
Dear Mr. President:
Of late, you have been asked to promote the construction of a massive transportation project connecting the East Coast to the Pacific and rumor has it that you are planning to embrace the technology of “railroads” which rely on steel rails and coal-fired steam engines. We urge you to reconsider this in favor of an approach which has many benefits: ox-cart transportation, or OCT, and implement a BTC or bovine transportation credit.
The advantages of ox-cart transportation include:
Sustainability: Railroads rely on steel and coal, both of which are finite, meaning that a peak in their production is inevitable. OCT uses only products (oxen, wood, oats) which are renewable.…
Continue Reading“The only good national energy strategy is one premised on private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law. Not a central, government plan, but a decentralized we-the-people ‘plan’.”
Energy studies, energy plans. They are not new. We saw them in 1938, 1977, yesterday—and in years between.
Now, the smartest-guys-in-the-government-room will, once again, pontificate and propose more regulation and intervention on top of the tens of thousands of pages of directives that have built up in the last 40+ years. (The modern era of U.S. energy regulation began with Nixon’s wage-and-price-control order of August 1971.)
Usually, such studies come out with recommendations, which then turn into legislative proposals for a Congressional debate and a vote before reaching the President’s desk. But with President Obama legislating via Executive Order, expect the worst.…
Continue Reading“Cost, even if it were accurately calculated, is much different than true ‘value’, especially in the case of the intermittent, unreliable electricity from wind. This elementary fact cannot be unknown to energy specialists at the U.S. Department of Energy, or their political leaders. The fact that DOE issued such misleading material is sad. The fact that it is done at taxpayer expense is despicable.”
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has, once again, issued a misleading document attempting to justify the massive tax dollars, subsidizes, and tax breaks that are being spend on renewable energy. The December 6, 2013, release is titled “The Clean Energy Economy in Three Charts.”
Unfortunately, this release will mislead gullible reporters and news outlets (it was reposted at Breaking Energy). Expect it to appear elsewhere.…
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