Fenton Communications has a long history of work within the left-wing advocacy apparatus. I’m delighted to see a great addition to the blogosphere, the Junk Science Mom, drill down into Fenton’s involvement in the manufactured campaign against bisphenol A, the plastics additive known as BPA. JSM presents a pretty good case study of how scare campaigns are orchestrated and nicely stitches together the interconnected relationships between activist groups, commercial businesses that stand to profit from these campaigns and the people who tie them all together (yet another example of a bootlegger-and-Baptist alliance). Fenton’s own website not only extols the firm’s success working with a corporation that specializes in BPA-free products it also trumpets the PR firm’s “partnership” with the Environmental Working Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council, both of which are virulently anti-BPA. Check it out!
Natural Resources Defense Council
Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, rebuts the argument that regulatory climate policies can’t be bad for the economy because so many big businesses support them.
This is an odd argument coming from people who are usually suspicious of big business, or even hostile to corporations. When did they decide that corporate support is some kind of good-housekeeping seal of approval?
To watch today’s film excerpt, click here. To watch the entire movie, click here. The text of today’s film clip follows.
Narrator: Some big corporations call for caps on CO2 emissions. Supposedly, this proves such policies won’t harm the economy. In fact, all it proves is that special interests can make windfall profits from energy rationing schemes.
Remember that $5 trillion loss the Lieberman-Warner bill would inflict on the economy? Well, that’s only half the story.
Dr. David Kreutzer (Heritage Foundation): The Lieberman-Warner bill also enacts a huge transfer from the consumers of energy to groups that are picked out–special interest groups–that Congress would designate. So after America has lost $5 trillion in income, there will be another $5 trillion taken and transferred from energy consumers.
Commentary
A corporation may lobby for cap-and-trade for various bottom-line reasons unrelated to environmental concern:
- In a carbon-constrained world, a company like GE, which makes nuclear reactors and wind turbines, can expect to sell more of its products.
- Utilities like PG&E that generate most of their electricity from hydro-electric dams, natural gas, or nuclear power can make a killing in the carbon market if the emission allowances are allocated for free based on a firm’s historic electricity output rather than historic emissions.
- Conversely, utilities like Duke Energy that generate most of their electricity from coal can make a killing if the emission allowances are allocated for free based on a firm’s historic emissions.
- Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs salivate at the prospect of a new, multi-trillion-dollar market in carbon permits, futures, and derivatives. They can make big bucks as brokers and carbon portfolio managers.
The last bullet merits additional comment, because if there ever was a policy issue that pits Wall Street against Main Street, cap-and-trade is it. The Breakthrough Institute summarizes the key finding of a non-public Goldman Sachs report titled “Carbonomics: Measuring impact of US carbon regulation on select industries”:
In a section titled “Carbon exchanges — build it, and they will (must) come to trade,” it estimates the bill [Waxman-Markey] would grow the global carbon market to become one of the biggest in the world, with trading volume of 175 to 263 million contracts per year – larger than the oil and gas markets combined and approximately the third-largest commodity market in the world after U.S. interest rates and stock indexes. The analysts estimate the profit margin for financial firms resulting from the new carbon market could reach $2 billion annually.
Baptists and Bootleggers
Corporate support for cap-and-trade should really come as no surprise, because nearly all “public-interest” regulation depends on marriages of convenience between the high-minded (or lofty-talking) and the narrowly interested–between those who seek regulation based on some moral, religious, or ideological concern and those who seek regulation to rig the market in their favor.
Economist Bruce Yandle of Clemson University was among the first to develop the theory of the Baptist-Bootlegger coalition as an explanation of public policy change.
“The theory,” says Yandle, “draws on colorful tales of states’ efforts to regulate alcoholic beverages by banning Sunday sales at legal outlets. Baptists fervently endorsed such actions on moral grounds. Bootleggers tolerated the actions gleefully because it limited their competition.”
Baptists provided the moral justification–the public-interest rationale–for restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages. Bootleggers provided the filthy lucre–the campaign contributions to politicians supporting the restrictions (known as ”blue laws“).
Nothing better illustrates the “bootlegger” role of big business in advancing the climate policy agenda than Enron’s lobbying and PR campaign for the Kyoto Protocol.
Enron, that poster child of corporate fraudulance, was a leading advocate of cap-and-trade in the climate treaty negotiations culminating in the Kyoto Protocol. Enron was a natural gas distributor, and Kyoto would suppress (or kill) electricity production from coal, boosting demand for Enron’s core business. Carbon controls would also pump up the market for Enron’s wind turbines and energy management services. In addition, Enron’s energy traders expected to make juicy commissions on the purchase and sale of emission allowances.
On December 12, 1997, the day after the Kyoto conference, Enron environmental affairs director John Palmisano, in a memorandum to colleagues, enthused:
If implemented, this agreement [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States. The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous. In addition, a carbon emissions trading system will be developed.
For both its high-profile and behind-the-scenes lobbying for Kyoto, Enron became the darling of green groups (a fact many prefer to forget). Palmisano elaborated:
Through our involvement with the climate change initiative, Enron now has excellent credentials with many “green” interests including Greenpeace, WWF [World Wildlife Fund], NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], German Watch, the U.S. Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI [World Resources Institute], and Worldwatch. Such praise went like this: “Other companies should be like Enron, seeking out 21st century business opportunities” or “Progressive companies like Enron are…” or “Proof of the viability of the viability of market-based energy and environmental programs is Enron’s success in power and SO2 [sulfur dioxide] trading.”
At the end of his memo, Palmisano exulted: ”I predict business opportunities within three years. . . This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!”
Many rent-seeking companies follow the trail that Enron blazed. For example, big-business lobbyists had a strong hand in crafting the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES, H.R. 2454).
All the distinguishing features of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade provisions were spelled out months in advance of the bill’s introduction by the United States Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP), in a January 2009 report called A Blueprint for Legislative Action. Core US-CAP proposals incorporated into Waxman-Markey include:
- Year 2020 emission reduction targets significantly less stringent than those called for by the European Union (17% below 2005 levels instead of 20%-30% below 1990 levels).
- Generous provision of free emission allowances (energy-ration coupons) rather than 100% auctioning as called for by President Obama (the Heritage Foundation’s August 6, 2009 analysis, p. 4, estimates that 85% to 101% [!] of the coupons will be given away in the early years of the program).
- Generous ”carbon offset” provisions authorizing regulated U.S. firms to pay non-regulated entities to reduce, avoid, or sequester emissions in lieu of reducing emissions themselves (the Breakthrough Institute estimates that the Waxman-Markey offsets will allow U.S. emissions to increase through 2030).
A Carbon Cartel
In February 2007 testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CEI President Fred Smith noted that cap-and-trade “is an ugly combination of two of the greatest ills to affect the market economy over the past two hundred years–cartelization and central planning.” The emissions cap, which determines how much CO2-emitting energy society may use, is set by the government–that’s the central planning element. The provision of emission allowances under the cap effectively creates a cartel.
The emissions allowances (energy-ration coupons) function just like the production quota allocated among members of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies), the only difference being that the ration coupons can be bought and sold. The economic effect, though, of both oil production quota and emission allowances is the same: restrict energy supply, raise energy prices, and create monopoly profits for a favored few. Fred commented:
As a result of this cartelization, energy costs rise, real wages fall, and output and employment fall. We know these are the effects of cartels, which is why we used to put the people who set up cartels in jail. Yet the Climate Action Partnership wants legal blessing for this new cartel. Any legislation enacting cap-and-trade would actually ennoble a new generation of robber barons and provide legal protection for their profiteering activities.
A key point to bear in mind is that the amount of wealth transferred from consumers to cartel members can greatly exceed the overall loss to the economy. See the diagram below.
Figure description: 1.5 gigatons of carbon (GtC) is the hypothetical amount of CO2 emissions society produces in the absence of a cap. When there is no cap, the right to emit CO2 costs zero dollars per ton of carbon. The hypothetical cap requires a 20% reduction in emissions from 1.5GtC to 1.2 GtC. The right to emit CO2 now costs $50/tC. That increases the cost of energy, which then reduces economic output (the dark shaded triangle). However, the amount taken and transferred from energy consumers–the additional dollars they must spend for home heating oil, natural gas, electricity, and gasoline (the lightly shaded square)–can be much larger.
Think again of OPEC. As long as oil prices don’t get so high that they depress the global economy, the wealth transferred from consumers to OPEC members will exceed the overall reduction in global GDP.
In the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), utilities made out like bandits during the first two years of the program. Governments gave the utilities more free ration coupons than they needed. The utilities then passed their imaginary costs onto their customers by raising rates. Then they sold the surplus coupons they didn’t need to manufacturers whose electric rates they had raised. Thanks to the ETS, the utilities achieved a two-fold (albeit short-lived) windfall profit. Open Europe, the British free-market think tank, provides the gory details in this hard-hitting report.
In the run-up to Waxman-Markey, cap-and-trade proponents repeatedly said that they had learned from Europe’s mistakes, and here in the USA all emission allowances would be auctioned in competitive bids. Yes, your electric rates would “necessarily skyrocket,” Barack Obama said, when campaigning for the White House. But, he assured us, the revenues would be returned somehow to taxpayers. Cap-and-trade would become cap-and-dividend.
That, however, was unacceptable to US-CAP, and in the sausage factory known as the legislative process, they carried the day. The Heritage Foundation’s August 6, 2009 report describes what happened:
In order to get the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill through the House Energy and Commerce Committee . . . Members of Congress promised generous handouts for various industries and special interests. In the near-term, the legislation promises to distribute 85-101% of the allowances to various interest groups at no cost . . . The biggest winners are the electric utilities, receiving 43.75% of the emission allowances in 2012 and 2013.
To read previous posts in this series, click on the links below.
Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, is on the global warming movement’s anti-coal campaign and the dangers it poses to U.S. consumers and the economy. To watch today’s clip, click here. To watch the entire film, click here.
The text of today’s excerpt follows. I provide additional commentary and links to supporting information in the footnotes.
Narrator: First and foremost, they want to ban construction of new coal-fired power plants. [1] Why? Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel. It releases the most carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced. [2]
More importantly, emissions from new coal plants are expected to swamp, by as much as five to one, all the emission reductions that Europe, Canada, and Japan might achieve under the U.N. global warming treaty, the Kyoto Protocol. Either global warming activists kill coal, or coal will bury Kyoto. [3]
Figure Source: Myron Clayton, New coal plants bury ‘Kyoto,’ Christian Science Monitor, 23 December 2004.
Narrator: To be fair, the activists say they’ll allow new coal generation, if the power plants deploy something called CCS, carbon capture and storage technology. [5] The idea is that instead of releasing CO2 into the air, the power stations would capture it, liquefy it, and then transport it to underground storage sites. [6] There’s just one problem. No commercial coal plants today have CCS technology. [7]
I asked Mary Hutzler, formerly head of analysis at the Energy Information Administration, how long it would take just to determine whether a CCS system would be economical for utilities to build.
Mary Hutzler, former Acting Acting Administrator, Energy Information Administration: It probably requires an immense amount of research and development. People have told me 1o to 15 years alone. [8]
Narrator: Mary also told me that building a national CCS pipeline network could take another decade. Developing the regulations would also take years. [9] So the proposed moratorium is really a ban on new coal plants for 20 years or more.
What’s the risk here? New coal generation is forecast to supply two-thirds of all new electric power over the next two decades. By 2030, new coal generation is expected to provide 15% of all our electricity. [10] So banning it, could create one heck of a power deficit. Frequent blackouts and power failures–an energy crisis would not be an unlikely consequence. At a minimum, our electric bills would go way up.
Narrator: But Al Gore is not content to ban new coal plants. He now proposes to scrap all existing coal plants and natural gas power plants too. He says we must replace all carbon-based electricity with carbon-free electricity in just 10 years–by 2018. [11]
Ben Lieberman (Heritage Foundation): The idea is absolutely off the charts, unrealistic. [12]
Dr. Patrick Michaels (Cato Institute): Al Gore is proposing the literally, physically impossible. [12]
Commentary
[1] James Hansen, the NASA scientist whose congressional testimony during the hot summer of 1988 launched the global warming movement, calls coal power plants ”factories of death“ and “the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.” The “top priority of any climate policy must be to stop the building of traditional coal plants,” writes climate crusader Joe Romm. He continues: “A climate policy that does not start by achieving at least the first goal, a moratorium on coal without CCS, must be labeled a failure.” “The silver bullet [for global warming] is no more coal,” says Architecture 2030. “Kill Coal. Coal is the enemy of the human race,” declares the Sustainable Development Issues Network. My Google search shows that global warming and coal are discussed on some 4,470,000 Web sites. It’s a safe bet most of those sites share the Gorethodox sentiments quoted above.
[2] Different fossil (carbon-based) fuels emit different amounts of CO2 in relation to the energy they produce. For a variety of fuels, the U.S. Energy Information Administration compares pounds of CO2 emitted per energy output measured in British thermal units (Btu).
Fuel Pounds/Btu
Natural Gas 117
Liquefied petroleum gas 139
Gasoline 156
Coal (bituminous) 205
Coal (subituminous) 213
Coal (lignite) 215
Petroleum coke 225
Coal (anthrocite) 227
From these numbers, we can calculate the emission ratios (or relative CO2 intensity) of the fuels. For example, bituminous coal is 1.37 times more CO2-intensive than gasoline, and 1.75 more CO2-intensive than natural gas.
[3] The Christian Science Monitor chart shown above and in the film clip is based on late 2004 estimates by UDI-Platts, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and unspecified industry sources. David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in a February 2005 speech, presented a similar bottom line, based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data. He said:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that 1400 GW of new coal plants will be built worldwide in the next 25 years alone. To put that in context, current U.S. coal capacity is about 330 GW and global capacity is 1000 GW. This enormous increase in coal capacity will lock us into a huge additional commitment to global warming unless we use technologies that reduce CO2 emissions to minimal levels; marginal efficiency improvements will not prevent this lock-in.
The lifetime emissions from just this next wave of coal investment will be about 580 billion tons of CO2. That amount is more than half the total loading of the atmosphere with CO2 from all forms of fossil fuel combustion in the past 250 years!
Build scores or hundreds of new coal plants, and the Kyoto CO2 reductions barely amount to a drop in the bucket. As has been widely reported, China is building coal power plants at the rate of one a week.
[5] A wide-ranging coalition of environmental groups called “Coal Moratorium Now“ demands that no new coal-fired power station be built unless it is equipped with carbon capture and storage. In 2008, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA)–the authors of the 2009 Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill (H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act)–introduced legislation (H.R. 5575) to impose a moratorium on new coal plants lacking CCS. In March 2009, state legislators introduced a similar bill in Texas. In April 2009, the UK Government proposed regulations requiring new coal plants to install CCS on at least 400 MW of output–about 25% of the output of an average power station. In addition, the power stations would have to capture 100% of their emissions by 2025–if the applicable technology exists by then. That’s a big “if.”
[6] A wealth of both basic and technical information on CCS is available in studies by MIT, the U.S. Government Accounting Office, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Congressional Research Service, the Department of Energy (DOE), and Glaser et al. (2008).
[7] Oil companies sometimes inject CO2 into wells to squeeze more petroleum out of them–a technique called enhanced oil recovery (OER). Sometimes people talk as if a CCS system could piggy-back on EOR projects. But, as MIT’s Future of Coal report points out, CO2 injection for EOR has “limited significance for long-term, large-scale CO2 sequestration–regulations differ, the capacity of EOR projects is inadequate for large-scale deployment, the geologic formation has been disrupted by production, and EOR projects are usually not well instrumented [monitored for CO2 leakage; p. xiii].”
The Department of Energy (DOE), citing rising costs, pulled the plug on FutureGen, a $1.5 billion government-industry partnership to build the world’s first commercial scale CCS power plant. In July 2009, however, FutureGen Alliance, Inc. announced it had reached an agreement with DOE to begin “construction of the first commercial-scale, fully integrated carbon capture and sequestration project in the country in Matton, Ill.” So there is still not even a commercial-scale demonstration project, though there may be in the next few years.
[8] MIT’s March 2007 Future of Coal report calls for large demonstration projects in 3-4 sites in different regions of the country costing “$500 million over eight years.” Better still, MIT argues, “Five large tests could be planned an executed for under $1 billion, and address the chief concerns for roughly 70% of U.S. [coal generation] capacity. Information from these projects would validate the commercial scalability of geologic carbon storage and provide a basis for regulatory, legal, and financial decisions needed to ensure safe, reliable, economic sequestration” (p. 54).
EPRI’s Bryan Hannegan estimated in March 2007 that CO2 capture (including compression, transportation, and storage) would increase the levelized cost of an Integrated Gassification Combined Cycle (IGCC) coal power plant by ”about 40-50%” (p. 5). IGCC is already more costly than the more common pulverized coal (PC) power plants. EPRI is confident that additional RD&D will lower carbon capture costs. But by how much and how soon is uncertain.
A February 2009 Stanford University study, citing a September 2008 McKinsey & Co. study and other sources, says that CCS is projected to increase the capital costs of new coal power plants by almost 50%. “On the basis of avoided emissions, the cost of CCS ranges from $30-$90/ tonne CO2, which translates into a 60-80% increase in the levelized cost of electricity ($/MWh).”
A July 2009 Harvard University study estimates that early adopters of carbon capture technology will incur a cost of $100-$150/ton of CO2 avoided (equivalent to 8-12 cents/kWh). Once the technology matures, the additional cost will fall to $35-$50/ton of CO2 avoided (equivalent to 2-5 cents/kWh), the researchers estimate. For comparison, in 2009, residential electric rates were 20.9 cents/kWh in Connecticut, 9.2 cents/kWh in Kansas, and 14.6 cents/kWh in California.
How long between early adoption and technological maturity? According to the researchers, increasing scale, learning by doing, and technological innovation “are expected to reduce abatement [CO2 capture] costs by approximately 65% by 2030, although such estimates are inevitably uncertain” (emphasis added).
In plain speak, it may take many years to sort out the economics of CCS.
[9] The scale of the network of pipelines and storage sites required to transport and bury CO2 from U.S. coal power plants is staggering. According to MIT’s Future of Coal report (p. ix):
- The United States produces about 1.5 billion tons per year of CO2 from coal-burning power plants.
- If all of this is CO2 is transported for sequestration, the quantity is equivalent to three times the weight and, under typical operating conditions, one-third the annual volume of natural gas transported by the U.S. gas pipeline system.
- If 60% of the CO2 produced from U.S. coal-based power generation were to be captured and compressed into a liquid for geologic sequestration, its volume would about equal the total U.S. oil consumption of 20 million barrels per day.
- At present the largest sequestration project is injecting one millions tons/year of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the Sleipner gas field into a saline aquifer under the North Sea.
Even if Congress approves such a system, and major environmental groups support it, NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) protests and litigation could block or delay implementation for many years. Some people just don’t like energy projects, regardless of how “green” the projects purport to be. For the gory details, check out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s ”Project No Project“ Web site.
[10] Two-thirds of all new generation and 15% of total U.S. electric supply–these estimates came from the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) 2008 Annual Energy Outlook. See the figure below.
Coal’s estimated share of new generation and total generation are lower in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2009. EIA forecasts that from 2007 to 2030, new coal generation will provide 64% of all new generation and 9% of total U.S. electric supply. See the figure below.
Actually, it’s remarkable that EIA still forecasts a robust increase in electric generation from coal. Coal increasingly operates in a politically hostile, litigious environment. The Sierra Club, for example, claims that its activists, lawyers, and allies, working with state and local leaders, have prevented 100 planned coal power plants from being built over the past eight years. Click here for a partial list.
For example, even in Texas, an energy-producing state, environmental activists stopped TXU Corp. from building eight of 11 planned new coal power plants, despite estimates by the Perryman Group that investment in the new plants, over five years, would add $25.8 billion to state GDP, $17.3 billion to in-state personal income, and 389,000-plus person-years of employment.
[11] I’m not making this up. The text and video of Gore’s speech calling for carbon-free electricity by 2018 are available here.
[12] According to the EIA, in 2008, renewable sources generated 356 billion kWh, of which 259.7 billion kWh, or 73%, came from conventional hydro-electric dams. Total net generation by the electric power sector was 3852 billion kWh. So renewables provided only 9% of total generation, which means that only about 2.4% came from the politically-correct renewables–wind, biomass, solar, and geothermal.
Note that non-hydro renewable sources would provide even less electricity but for a plethora of market-rigging federal and state tax breaks and subsidies and Soviet-style production quotas known as renewable portfolio standards.
Coal and natural gas provided 2654 billion kWh, or about 69% of total U.S. electric generation in 2008. Gore and his allies would undoubtedly oppose the construction of new large hydroelectric dams even if suitable sites were available. So what Gore and “We Can Solve It” are proposing to do, is replace the 69% of our electricity that comes from coal and natural gas with the non-hydro renewables that currently supply only 2.4%–all in 10 years.
This plan would fail–dismally. Our electricity rates would skyrocket, because the demand for renewable electricity, ramped up by mandates, would vastly exceed supply. No transition that big and that fast would be smooth. Service disruptions and blackouts would likely be frequent and perversive–a chronic energy crisis.
Gore’s plan would also set a world record for government waste, since hundreds of profitable coal and natural gas power plants would have to be decommissioned long before the end of their useful lives.
To read previous posts in this series, click on the links below:
- Policy Peril: Looking for antidote to An Inconvenient Truth? Your search is over.
- Policy Peril Segment 1: Heat Waves
- Policy Peril Segment 2: Air Pollution
- Policy Peril Segment 3: Hurricanes
- Policy Peril Segment 4: Sea-Level Rise
- Policy Peril Segment 5: Is the Science Debate Over?
- Policy Peril Segment 6: Cap and Trade
- Policy Peril Segment 7: Fuel Economy Standards
Mark Tapscott, in today’s Washington Examiner, explodes the propaganda from the “Reality Campaign,” a coalition of leftist environmental groups, which has all but declared war on America’s most abundant source of energy: coal.
You’ve no doubt seen the TV spot where the guy in the hard hat steps through an industrial-looking door into the desert and begins mocking “clean coal,” which he says doesn’t exist.
This clever advocacy campaign is courtesy of the imaginatively misnamed Reality Coalition of the Alliance for Climate Protection, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Sierra Club.
Despite the millions of private donors, lucrative investments and big endowments received by members of the Reality Coalition, your tax dollars helped finance some of its richest members.
The NRDC, for instance, got a $400,333 federal grant in 2006 under the Clean Air Act, according to FedSpending.org, even though the organization’s 2006 annual budget exceeded $70 million. You can review NRDC tax returns at Guidestar.org.
So, if you’ve wondered why extremist green groups have so much money, it’s because they get so much of your money!
And NRDC isn’t the only Reality Coalition member getting government support. According to their most recent IRS forms, the National Wildlife Federation received $188, 695 in government grants in 2006, while the League of Conservation Voters got nearly all of its funding for 2006 — $5,501,205 out of $5,638,881 — from government grants. (The IRS Form 990 lists government grants from all levels together, not just federal, but still, it’s tax dollars, either way. Moreover, according to the federal website usaspending.gov, which lists all federal grants, NWF regional offices have gotten $81,200 from the federal government in FY 2008.)
Federal funding of advocacy is bad enough. Making this situation even worse is the fact that said advocacy is so misleading. Tapscott goes on:
But back to clean coal. Is there really no such thing, as claimed by the Reality Coalition? Well, consider the following facts (courtesy of Paul Driessen of www.Eco-Imperialism.com) and judge for yourself:
* Particulate emissions (i.e. “soot”) from coal-burning power plants have been reduced to 90 percent below 1970 levels despite a tripling of coal use.
* Most of what’s left in that soot is ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate, neither of which is regarded as dangerous to public health, even at much higher levels of concentration.
* Coal is used to generate half of all electricity used in this country, and in 22 states it accounts for 60-98% of the electricity used. Ever calculated the economic cost — lost jobs, production, productivity – of banning coal in states like Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia or Wyoming that absolutely depend upon the black rock?
* Ever think about the human cost to Americans of banning coal? Here’s a partial list of medical products made possible by the electricity generated from coal-burning power plants: X-rays, CT scans, colonoscopies, cardiac surgeries, refrigerated vaccinations against deadly diseases and kidney dialysis.
* The human cost of not having electricity in Third World countries is staggering, as Driessen notes in a recent Townhall.com column: “Four million infants, children and parents die every year from lung infections — caused by smoke, soot and other pollutants from open fires that heat their homes and cook their meager food, because they don’t have electricity. Two million more perish from intestinal diseases, caused by unsafe water and spoiled food, because they lack refrigeration, sanitation and water treatment.”
My point here is this: Global warming extremists continually make absolute claims in their propaganda like the Reality Coalition’s clean coal spot, but the truth is often found in the facts they ignore or try to suppress.
The facts cited by Driessen concern conventional coal. New technologies are on the horizon such as gasification and carbon-capture that promise to make coal burning even more environmentally friendly.
So strictly speaking, the “clean coal” technologies aren’t here yet. But then neither are the alternative energy supplies the environmentalists regularly cite as ready replacements for coal and other carbon-based fuels. And there are serious trade-offs with the alternatives that environmentalists don’t like to talk about.
Indeed, as Thomas Sowell has insistently noted, it is the tendency to ignore the necessity of trade-offs, in search of all-encompassing “solutions,” that has led many on the Left down utopian-seeking dead ends — with dire consequences in the area of real-world public policy.
See Paul Driessen’s interview in CEI’s Planet newsletter here.
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