CFACT contributor Marita Noon points out that the recent drop in crude oil prices has not been felt at the gasoline pump, largely thanks to unplanned shutdowns at numerous aging refineries that -- thanks to counterproductive government regulations -- cannot be replaced or even significantly upgraded at any reasonable cost. Indeed, the last time anyone built a new oil refinery in the U.S. was 1977.
Bureaucrats placed in charge of "public" lands -- largely in the Western U.S. -- are rewarded for poor management and punished for good management that might lower the cost to the public. They get further incentives toward mismanagement as a result of federal laws and regulations and the
Tom and Kathy Stocklen fought the National Park Service for over 40 years and retired with their property intact, despite repeated efforts, even threats, by NPS bureaucrats to take their land in Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes Natioanl Lakeshore. Curiously, the NPS has recently ended four decades of dredging the Platte River, where the Stocklens placed their canoes, for safe navigation. Clearly, Washington thinks that landowners are public nuisances.
“Over the past three decades, fossil fuels helped 1.3 billion people get electricity and escape debilitating energy poverty – over 830 million because of coal. However, 1.3 billion people (the population of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe combined) still do not have electricity…. That is why climate change is a “critical moreal issue." Scientists who question the supposed “consensus” on climate change are routinely labeled “skeptics” or even “deniers,” in a not-so-subtle reference to Holocaust denial. It is an absurd charge. All of us agree that climate change has been “real” since Earth and human history began. It is ongoing, [...]
Unless a federal judge issues a preliminary injunction, the definition of the “Waters of the U.S.” will change on August 28—giving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to regulate the water in your backyard (even the water that might be in your backyard due to a heavy rain). Even, according to West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey: “any area where agencies believe water may flow once every 100 years.” Thirty-one states, in four districts, have filed motions with the federal courts to block the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) from beginning to enforce the new “Waters [...]
Another day, another way in which the Obama Administration undermines U.S. energy security and prosperity -- this time through granting ridiculous concessions to Iran while hunkering down to depress the U.S. and Canadian oil markets. Such an energy policy could have only been designed in places like Tehran -- or by those whose desire to placate the iranians is so intense that common sense and the U.S.national interest have been thrown overboard.
Opposition to the excesses of the Obama EPA and other related agencies is mounting -- unions are seeing jobs die; landowners do not like trumped up "endangered species" habitat designations rob them of economically productive land, and ordinary citizens are recoiling from the higher costs for unreliable renewable energy.
Despite the fact that similar regulation of airline emissions has been put on hold by the United Nations following threats of massive retaliation from China and Russia and declarations that the entire action violted the UN Charter, the Obama EPA is now proposing very similar regulations for U.S. airlines -- rules that could cost customers both money and flight options.
Mounting evidence that the EPA falsifies and misconstrues evidence and ignores contrary scientific studies in order to justify its outrageous, harmful regulations. CFACT analyst Larry Bell says the time has come to regelate the EPA to the boneyard and return environmental decision making to state regulators.
CFACT advisor Marita Noon shows, using publicly available documentsjust jhow dependent the solar industry is on subsidies and other favorable government policies in which the many subsidize the few. Even though the price for photovoltaic elements has dropped dramatically, the industry could not survive without the Investment Tax Credit for renewable energy, state renewable portfolio standards; (which are fading fast), and the Obama Administration’s pro-solar policies.
The elites are at war against the Earth's people -- and they are using the United Nations (and the EPA) as their strike force. CFACT senior advisor Paul Driessen and fusion energy advocate Tom Tamarkin note that the elites are seeking complete micro-management of the energy and living standards for every individual on the planet (except, of course, the elites). This is akin to the reintroduction of serfdom (maybe even slavery).
The behemoth that is the federal bureaucracy is wholly unaccountable to the people whom they are now pushing around via massive new regulations -- Obama style -- that take away private property rights without due process or even a hearing. Washington is out of control and must be reined in,
Alan Carlin should know -- he's been there. The EPA began to phase out independent scientists during the 1990s, and the Obama Administration has finished the job -- such that the "science" from the EPA is whatever the government wants it to say. It is long past time for a change back to scientific inquiry that does not have to lead to a foregone conclusion.
Because big companies today have learned that they are "too big to fail," even the oil and gas companies whose businesses are under attack from the Green Left are for the most part unwilling to publicly challenge the false and misleading assumptions upon which Green mis-eonomics is based -- or even the strangling regulations that they will have to abide by. The chief reason: They can pass on costs to consumers and they do not want the negative regulatory attention that resistance to bureaucratic fiat can bring.
The Export Import Bank should not be reauthorized, says CFACT advisor Marita Noon. First, because the big businesses who profit the most -- including foreign companies -- do not need the help. second, because small businesses can be aided in much better ways.