Last month, Earth Day came and went. Perhaps you missed hearing about it. For 2013, the
theme was “The Face of Climate Change.” Other than a change in the Post Office
cancellation mark
on your letters from the usual wavy lines, to the four stick-like wind
turbines and a sun symbol, there was little note of what was once an
event celebrated by 20 million Americans. Tim Wagner, Utah
representative for the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America Campaign,
groused: “Media coverage of global warming has virtually disappeared.”
According to
EarthDayCentral.com, one of the goals of Earth Day is to help you “Discover what you can do to save the environment.”
Perhaps, people no longer see the need for planetary salvation.
The
Christian Science Monitor
offered an Earth Day 2013 report card on global warming. The author
starts with: “When Earth Day observances first began in
1970, Cleveland had recently doused a pollutant-fueled fire on a section
of the Cuyahoga River. Cities were often shrouded in thick blankets of
smog. And large portions of Lake Erie were so fouled by industrial,
farm, and sewage runoff that sections of the 241-mile-long lake were
pronounced dead.” And later, he reports: “Since that first Earth Day,
the air over major cities is cleaner. Lake Erie is healthier. So is the
Cuyahoga River, which groups in Cleveland would like to turn into a
centerpiece of urban life. The improvements have come with ‘yes, but...’
as other environmental challenges have elbowed their way to the fore.
But for the most part, tools are in place to deal with them.”
As Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, explains, the ‘80s
ushered in the age of environmental extremism. The basic issues, for
which he and Greenpeace fought, had largely been accomplished, and the
general public was in agreement with the primary message. In order for
the environmentalists to remain employed, they had to adopt ever more
extreme positions. Moore says: “What happened is environmental
extremism. They’ve abandoned science and logic altogether.”
Their
message today is “anti:” anti-human, anti-science, anti-technology,
anti-trade and globalization, anti-business and capitalism, and
ultimately, anti-civilization.
Moore’s view helps understand how the environmental movement has gone from trying to save the planet to killing the US economy.
The American economy has some basic problems. We need more well-paid
jobs, increased revenue, and our trade balance is out of whack. Each of
these issues could be easily addressed, but environmentalists are doing
everything they can to kill potential solutions. Three such examples are
coal mining and exporting; natural gas extraction and conversion to
liquefied natural gas (LNG) that can then be exported; and the Keystone
pipeline—all of which face extreme opposition from environmentalists.
COAL
The US has the world’s largest economically recoverable coal resources—with more than
one-fourth of the world’s reserves.
Unfortunately, our policies have stymied growth in the mining industry.
Bill Bissett, President of Kentucky Coal Association, told me: “Our
industry is accustomed to market fluctuations and competition with other
fuel sources, but having a federal government place additional
regulations on one geographic region (Eastern KY and WV) and one
industry (coal mining) is absolutely unfair.”
Last month, environmental groups (including the Sierra Club and
Greenpeace) sent a letter to newly-confirmed Interior Secretary Sally
Jewell
calling for a moratorium
on the leasing of federal lands for coal mining in the Powder River
Basin (PRB) of Montana and Wyoming—which accounts for about forty
percent of US coal reserves. The results of a recent lease sale in
Wyoming, offers insight regarding the economic importance of leasing
these federal lands for coal mining. Peabody Coal paid nearly
$800 million
to the US Government for the rights to expand an existing coal mine and
maintain their current workforce. The $800 million was a “bonus
payment” and gives them the right to lease the coal and pay 12.5% of the
sales price as a royalty. According to data from the Bureau of Land
Management, 13 active coal mines in the Wyoming portion of the PRB
alone, employ more than 6800 workers.
While, as Bissett addressed, policy under this administration has
harshly singled out coal and the coal miners for punishment, coal’s low
cost and abundance continues to make it a highly preferential fuel for
power generation in developing countries like China and India. And, as
I’ve
previously written,
even Europe is increasing its use of coal for electricity generation,
as they’ve discovered the prohibitively high cost of renewables. In
2011, exports to European and Asian markets represented 76% of total US
coal exports—up 31% compared to 2010.
Currently, US coal is easily shipped to Europe from ports on the east
coast, but the US is missing out on the important Asian market—now being
met by more expensive Australian competitors—due to infrastructure
opposition from environmental groups. In the
Los Angeles Times (LAT), Bill McKibben, founder of
350.org and a
legend
in the world of climate activism, wrote: “Those exports can’t really
take off, however, unless West Coast ports dramatically expand their
deepwater loading capacity. … Environmentalists are trying desperately
to block the port expansion.” Addressing the situation, the
Wall Street Journal
states: “there are now no major coal exporting facilities on the US
West Coast. Washington State, with its proximity to coal-rich Wyoming
and Montana, is seen as the best place to start.” PRB coal
is
being shipped to China and India through Vancouver.
Additionally, the
countries’ needs are being filled by Australian and Indonesian coal—so
environmentalists’ fears that shipping US coal will undermine
“everything we've accomplished,” as Sierra Club spokesman David
Graham-Caso says, are wrong. The coal is being shipped and used—but the
US is losing out on the jobs (which would be mostly union jobs), the
revenue, and the benefit to the trade deficit. The LAT/McKibben piece
cites KC Golden, policy director of Seattle’s Climate Solutions group:
“Can you imagine standing at the mouth of the Columbia River, watching
ships sail in from Asia carrying solar panels and electric car batteries
and plasma TVs, passing ships from America carrying coal?”
Worse, can
you imagine all those goods coming in—manufactured using Australian
coal-fueled electricity, and nothing going out? That’s what we have now.
A
report
from the Energy Policy Research Foundation states: “US production will
merely replace higher cost production. … Neither net world coal
combustion nor GHG emissions will change as a result of an expansion of
US coal exports.” The report concludes: “The higher net value received
is in effect a wealth transfer from foreign consumers to US producers
and the national economy. This net gain to the national economy shows up
in higher returns to invested capital, greater employment opportunities
from expanded investment, higher revenues to state, local and federal
governments, and higher lease values on coal reserves from federal and
state lands.”
But environmental groups don’t want this “net economic gain to the
national economy.” Apparently, they’d prefer that we continue to borrow
from China’s Australian coal-fueled economy.
LNG
LNG faces a similar problem. Natural gas was once the favored choice of
environmentalists—until privately funded hydraulic fracturing (or high
pressure drilling) advancements made it plentiful and, consequently
cheap. The low-cost fuel snatched away the fossil fuel-free dream that
seemed to be almost within reach. Now environmentalists oppose natural
gas as well. The Sierra Club’s
Beyond Natural Gas site claims: “Increasing reliance on natural gas displaces the market for clean energy.”
Many countries want US natural gas. Unlike coal, natural gas cannot
just be put on a ship and sent to the awaiting customer. It must first
be liquefied—hence the term LNG. The liquefaction process requires
costly facilities, which, for economic reasons, need a large customer
base—many with which the US does not have free trade agreements (though
the Energy Department can permit them, provided it determines that such
ventures are consistent with the public interest). The
International Business Times,
on March 1, 2013, reports that: “As of this date, 17 applications for
multibillion-dollar facilities to turn the commodity into liquefied
natural gas, or LNG, for export are under review by the Energy
Department.” Let’s hope they don’t take as many years and as many
reviews as the
Keystone pipeline.
LNG exports could have a tremendous positive impact on the US economy. A recent
IHS global insight
report concluded that LNG exports would “result in the creation of over
100,000 direct, indirect, and economy wide jobs and have an immediate
economic impact resulting in $3.6 to $5.2 billion in potential annual
revenues.”
And,
LNG exporting would not only create jobs and increase revenue, it would also reduce trade deficits. A just-released
report
from the Rio Grande Foundation states: “The United States currently
runs a $6 billion trade deficit with Japan. That nation is particularly
eager to import LNG from the US due to the nuclear accident at
Fukushima.”
Once again, environmentalists oppose jobs, revenue, and trade-deficit
reduction. Earlier this year, more than 40 groups and individuals took
out a half page ad in the
New York Times
that said:
“Exporting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to overseas markets
will mean more drilling and fracking on US land, which are dirty and
dangerous practices.”
KEYSTONE
Like coal mining and export, natural gas extraction, liquefaction, and
export, the Keystone pipeline would create thousands of union jobs and
increased service employment in supporting communities; benefit local
and state economies, and provide additional revenues to the federal
coffers; and help balance the trade deficit, as some of the refined
product would be exported. But once again, environmental opposition has
targeted the pipeline—causing delay after delay that has now postponed
the economic benefit of the pipeline.
Last week, Russ Girling, TransCanada, CEO,
said:
“I believe that those that are fundamentally opposed to our pipeline
are getting louder and more shrill as we move towards a decision.” He
announced that the potential start date must be moved from the
previously planned late 2014 or early 2015 to late 2015.
The
Keystone pipeline saga is the same song, another verse.
These are just three current examples of how the influence of
environmental organizations is driving policy in the name of planetary
salvation that is, in reality, resulting in economic devastation that
could lead to humanity’s ultimate starvation. Environmental motivations
are less about saving the planet and more about killing the global
economy—while enriching themselves at taxpayers’ expense.