“It hasn’t been that long ago we had a train derailment that was carrying [heavy Canadian oil] through West Virginia and had a horrible explosion, so I know it’s much more dangerous to move it by rail or by road.” [ – Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), January 21, 2021]
“From a safety perspective, we should be encouraging the transport of energy via our vast network of pipelines and facilitate the responsible expansion of that network.” (Sen. Manchin, February 9, 2021)
Joe Biden’s executive order to deny an international permit to complete the well-along northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline has brought climate-related economic destruction to a new high. Noted one report on the project’s hitherto progress:
… Continue ReadingThere are now more than 90 miles of Keystone XL pipe in the ground, a string of temporary work camps under construction, and roughly 48,000 tons of pipe sitting in yards all along the route.
“Offshore bird mortality cannot be studied the same way we study land-based wind sites – by searching the ground for carcasses. The sea is an extremely harsh environment. Birds and bats killed by turbines are likely to become fish food, sink or drift away with the currents.”
– Christine Morabito, “Did Mass Audubon Sell its Soul to the Wind Industry?” The Valley Patriot (June 2015)
Rationalizing Godzilla-sized industrial wind turbines has badly compromised the DC-based environmental movement. To the well-green-heeled, infrastructure-intensive wind turbines and solar arrays have to ecologically work. Or else the world is stuck with oil, natural gas, coal, not to mention nuclear, biomass, and hydro. Or else the time and emotions invested in the issue go to waste.
Imaging is the grand task of the eco-renewable lobby.…
Continue Reading“… to a significant extent man commands as well the very destiny of this planet where he lives, and the destiny of all life upon it.”
“In order to have both environmental quality and an improving standard of living, we will need to develop new clean energy sources and to learn to use energy more efficiently.”
– President Richard Nixon (February 8, 1972)
Government grows with emergencies, real or imagined. There have been wartime emergencies, such as World War II. And there have been Malthusian ’emergencies’–as in resource exhaustion in the 1970s and climate change today.
Forty-nine years ago today, amid a natural gas shortage (from long-standing price controls), and with tightening oil markets (from his price controls), President Nixon gave a “Special Message to Congress Outlining the 1972 Environmental Program.”…
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