There is lots going on outside of Washington, D.C. when it comes to the environment, and perhaps no issue is bigger than the grassroot revolt against industrial wind parks. Such is not a ploy or plot by Big Oil or Big Coal or big anything. It is a natural reaction by those under a lifestyle assault by a mega-instrusive energy source that is about government dependence, political capitalism, and false environmental dogma–not the common good and environmental progress.
Future historians will no doubt wonder how Big Environmentalism got so far off track to support industrial windpower. A machine in every pristine–is this what environmental elitism at its worst?
“Let’s take back our environment from Big Environmentalism” could be the rallying cry of this new environmental movement. Are such groups as the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and (you fill in the blank) listening?…
Continue ReadingLast August, the the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) graded itself on its enforcement of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in terms of economic benefit-cost analysis. Surprise not: EPA came up with an astounding $31 of clean air benefits for every dollar of cost. That, and Administrator Lisa Jackson can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Deja Vu: EPA’s 1997 Study
Back in 1997, the EPA credited itself with providing $22.2 trillion in benefits at a cost of a half trillion dollars from enforcing the CAA from 1970 (when the EPA was established) through 1990 (when Congress amended the CAA in stricter form)—a B/C ratio of more than 40-to-1.
Of the EPA’s $22 trillion net benefit estimate (gross benefits less cost), economists Randall Lutter and Richard B. Belzer wrote: “We know of no professional economist independent of EPA who takes the EPA’s estimate seriously,” for—if actually true—the sum would equal “roughly the aggregate net worth of all U.S.…
Continue ReadingPresidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and “bankrupt” any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators are keeping.
President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that require millions of acres of land and billions of dollars in subsidies to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create (really centrally plan) jobs that cost taxpayers upwards of $220,000 apiece – most of them in China.
His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum prospects, via “wild lands” and other designations, and dragging its feet on issuing leases and drilling permits.
Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency is challenging shale gas drilling and fracking, and imposing draconian carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rules, now that Congress and voters have rejected cap-tax-and-trade.…
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