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Toxic Energy Killers

Posted by Bob on Sunday, February 03, 2008 11:54:35 AM

Is the plummeting Dollar, now further threatened by hot-money outflows likely to result from the Fed's rate cuts, also coming under irresponsible attack by our own Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service through its unwarranted proposal to list the polar bear as an endangered species?

The polar bear is not endangered, and there is no scientific basis for the proposed listing. The government of Nunavut, in Canada's Northwest Territory, still allows hunters to kill up to 500 polar bears a year to preserve other wildlife on which the bears feed. So is this a new plot to kill domestic energy development in Alaska? A proposal has just been entered in the Senate to stop the Chukchi Sea oil and gas lease sale offshore Alaska planned for early February, the first since 1991, until the polar bear is listed and the sale is killed.

But let's consider the consequences. The US Energy Information Administration reports that last year's US Net Petroleum Imports averaged 12,390,000 barrels per day. Multiply this by 365 days per year and the total is 4,522,350,000 barrels per year. Assuming a cost of $90 per barrel, last year we would have paid our foreign providers a whopping $407 BILLION!!! We also ran a foreign trade deficit of $711 Billion, so these petroleum imports accounted for up to 57% of a huge bill that is killing the dollar exchange rate and continuing to escalate the cost of imports, including energy. Can we afford the possibility of $200 oil and $6 gasoline maybe soon, as the Dollar's value plummets and a higher price is naturally demanded by foreign suppliers?

We could reduce imports significantly by producing far more petroleum product domestically, but much of the prime federal lands in the US western states, Alaska, and the continental shelves are locked up and off limits to drilling thanks to pressure from the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and Greenpeace, among others. What does it take to alert their members to the terrible damage these destructive policies are doing to our economy and to the future living standard of their members, too.

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Crusaders Killing Dollar

Posted by Bob on Saturday, January 19, 2008 1:20:37 PM

As Ron Reagan correctly states, President Bush's approach to the Saudis, tin cup in hand and asking them to pump more oil so we can buy it on the world market for a lower price is humiliating and disgusting. The recent oil-price spike is caused in large measure by the rapidly depreciating value of the US Dollar that results from shoveling huge piles of dollars to foreigners so we can import a major proportion of our energy needs instead of producing more locally.

Why are vast areas of our federal lands off-limits to all but a few wilderness backpackers? Why are huge prime prospects in Alaska and our 200-mile continental shelf also off-limits to energy development? These problems basically result from quasi-religious enviro-fanaticism, and here a little review of the past may be instructive.

A thousand years ago, waves of devout Christian "Crusaders" set out from western Europe to rescue the Holy Land from the "Infidels". Those early crusading fanatics imagined their noble cause justified their excesses, but history has judged them harshly -- elite, aggressive, dogmatic, defying reason. The legacy of their fanaticism and depredations haunts us even today, and the word "crusader" now suffers a pejorative connotation.

After World War II, a beneficial new genre of enviro-worship evolved, with the noble purpose of rescuing Goddess Earth from human depredations. Well-intentioned parishioners joined quasi-religious denominations, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Greenpeace, Earth Liberation Front, Gaia Mater et al, and many performed great good works, despite excesses from an evolving "crusader" syndrome among the preachers.

But will their ministers, high priests and ayatollahs need $200-oil to realize their overly-restrictive land-use testaments are severely restricting domestic energy development, putting the value of the dollar and our entire economy at risk for all Americans, including their own parishioners? To avoid reaping an anti-environmental backlash and the opprobrium now heaped on the original crusaders for their excesses, I pray these new crusaders may soon see the light, and instead of exercising endless obstructionism, will apply their expertise in helping to ensure prudent development of all our fossil-fuel energy resources.