In The News
Why Kyoto?
Tuesday May 13, 2003
FACT: Not for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as Europe has proven, or to solve the “problem” of global warming—Dr. Tom Wigley of the National Science Foundation found that Kyoto would reduce global temperatures by a mere .07 degrees Celsius by 2050. As it turns out, according to France, Kyoto’s raison d’etre is quite unrelated to saving the globe. French President Jacques Chirac said during a speech at The Hague in November of 2000 that Kyoto represents “the first component of an authentic global governance.” Margot Wallstrom, the EU’s Environment Commissioner, takes a more nuanced position, asserting that Kyoto is about “the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide.”
Cost of Kyoto
Wednesday May 7, 2003
FACT: When it comes to the nation’s “long-term economic situation,” these leading Democrats apparently criticized President Bush for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol—yet they fall conspicuously silent on the issue of Kyoto’s destructive impact on the economy. According to the Energy Information Administration, the Kyoto Protocol would cost the US economy up to about $400 billion annually (4% of GDP), a figure that over time would dwarf the cost of the tax cut.
Green Groups
Wednesday April 30, 2003
FACT: These groups, despite such rhetorical flourishes, care more about fundraising than they do about the environment. According to a 2001 series in the Sacramento Bee, six national environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and NRDC, spent so much on fund raising and overhead they didn't have enough left to meet the minimum benchmark for environmental spending--60 percent of annual expenses--recommended by charity watchdog organizations. As National Journal's Congress Daily reported today, according to FY 1999 federal tax returns, the nation's nine largest environmental groups--the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation, the National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Defense, Wilderness Society and the League of Conservation Voters--amassed $234.4 million in contributions. In FY 2001, the last year for which data is available, that figure jumped to $330 million--largely fueled, incidentally, by the election of President Bush--with several groups more than doubling the amount of cash raised.
Natural Resources Defense Council
Thursday April 24, 2003
FACT: With rhetoric like that, it would seem President Bush, at least according to NRDC, is incapable of doing anything positive for the environment, right? Well, the good folks at NRDC, apparently without irony, said recently that EPA’s proposal to reduce diesel emissions from off-road vehicles represented “the biggest public health step since lead was removed from gasoline more than two decades ago.” According to the Washington Post, an NRDC official referred to the emissions plan as “the biggest health advance in a generation.” Let’s see…the environment is “under siege,” yet the nation is undergoing the “biggest public health step in a generation.” Sounds credible to us.
US PIRG and Renewable Energy
Thursday April 17, 2003
FACT: While renewable energy should be part of the nation’s energy mix, U.S. PIRG is, to put it mildly, vastly overestimating its commercial and technological viability. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), our electricity mix in 2020 will break down as follows: coal, 44 percent; natural gas 36 percent; nuclear, 11 percent; hydroelectric, 6 percent. Non-hydro renewables will make up only 3 percent of electric generation. Even under scenarios that assume rapid improvements in renewable technologies with correspondingly lower costs to consumers, the figure jumps to just 4.6 percent. In a rather striking understatement, EIA said: “Projections of large increases in renewable energy use should be viewed with caution.”
Los Angeles Times and New Source Review
Wednesday April 16, 2003
FACT: The Bush Administration is trying to reform the Clinton Administration’s extreme definition of routine maintenance, which, before Carol Browner’s tenure, allowed plants to forgo the costly, burdensome NSR permitting process for minor activities, including those that increased energy efficiency, improved safety, and that didn’t significantly increase pollution.
As for the lack of evidence that fewer rules lead to “better breathing,” the LA Times editorialists should read about, among other things (including NSR reform), the 1990 Acid Rain trading program, which eliminated complex, command-and-control requirements in favor of a simple market-based trading system. The President’s Clear Skies initiative is based on that very system, which has led to 100 percent compliance and unprecedented reductions of sulfur dioxide emissions over the last decade.
ANWR
Thursday April 10, 2003
FACT: Lieberman’s 6-month estimate is obtuse and misleading, based on the outlandish assumption that the US would consume no imported oil and no domestic oil for that same 6-month period. It also assumes ANWR holds 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil. But the U.S. Geological Survey's most conservative estimates say ANWR holds 5.9 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This would provide the US with 2 million barrels of oil per day (the Arctic Pipeline daily maximum) for 8 years, more than the 1.6 million barrels a day the US imports from Saudi Arabia. Moreover, USGS also found that ANWR could hold as much as 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which would produce a reliable domestic supply of oil for almost 22 years.
ANWR
Wednesday April 9, 2003
FACT: Sen. Boxer is implying that oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s North Slope has hurt wildlife. She’s wrong. We’ll let the National Research Council's study, titled "Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska's North Slope," speak for itself:
Caribou: "For the past 50 or 60 years, all four [caribou] herds have been exposed to oil and gas exploration activity, but only the [Central Artic Herd] has been in regular and direct contact with surface development related to oil production and transport….The [Central Artic Herd] has increased from around 5,000 animals in the late 1970s to its current (2000) size of 27,000."
Polar Bear: "Industrial activity in marine waters of the Beaufort Sea has been limited and sporadic and likely has not caused serious cumulative effects on ringed seals or polar bears."
Muskoxen: "No effects of seismic exploration on muskoxen have been detected to date."
Porcupine Caribou: "To date, oil and gas activities have had little influence on the Porcupine Herd…"
ANWR
Monday April 7, 2003
FACT: North Slope oil drilling has and can be done in an environmentally sound manner. In “The Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska's North Slope,” the National Research Council stated: “Major oil spills have not occurred on the North Slope or adjacent oceans through operation of the oil fields." The report also stated that small spills have occurred but “have not been frequent or large enough for their effects to have accumulated.”
ANWR
Thursday April 3, 2003
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) noted on the Senate floor that when “President Eisenhower [in 1960] set aside 8.9 million acres to form the original Arctic Range, his Secretary of the Interior noted that the area was: ‘one of the most magnificent wildlife and wilderness areas in North America, a wilderness experience not duplicated elsewhere.’” She continued: “I say to my Republican friends, it was a Republican President who said let's preserve this place forever.”
FACT: This statement is both irrelevant and misleading. It’s misleading because from 1960 to 1980, the federal government allowed oil and gas leasing in what was then called the Arctic Range. It’s irrelevant because the 8.9 million acres have nothing to do with the area under debate. In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act set aside 1.5 million acres of ANWR’s Coastal Plain (called the 1002 area) for potential oil and gas exploration, an area that, with the exception of 3 months out of the year, is covered in snow and ice. Proponents favor drilling in just 2,500 acres (the size of Dulles Airport) of the Coastal Plain, which represents less than one-tenth of one percent of the 19-million acre refuge.