In The News
Fundraisering amd the National Resource Defense Council
Tuesday July 8, 2003
FACT: It’s called fundraising, or, better yet, NRDC’s patented fundraising through fear, lies, and distortion. Tucked into the Adams screed of terror is an appeal for green, which goes to the heart of NRDC’s existence. Adams urges his readers to “take the following steps right away: Help advance this campaign by contributing $10 or more to NRDC. Your gift will enable us to sound the alarm about White House attacks on our environment.” Of course, the Bush “onslaught” can’t be stopped “without your immediate help.” Incidentally, according to the American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog group, the NRDC was one of six national environmental groups that failed to meet the minimum benchmark for environmental spending—60 percent of annual expenses—because it spent so much on fundraising and overhead.
David Hawkins, National Resource Defense Council and Coal
Friday June 27, 2003
FACT: It’s hard to tell. On the same day Hawkins delivered his testimony, the NRDC launched an ad campaign, defended the following day by Hawkins, comparing pollution from “dirty power plants”—read: coal-fired power plants—to weapons of mass destruction. Those dastardly power companies, who use coal to “deliver electricity to nearly every home and hamlet in the country,” are causing, according to the ad’s sinister voiceover, “death and disease and global warming.” And further: “We have the technology to stop it, but the polluting power companies won’t.” So, to get this straight: the U.S. leads the world in addressing many of the problems caused by coal, but power companies won’t address those problems; coal is good, but it’s a weapon of mass destruction. Makes eminent sense.
Natural Gas Prices and Chemical Security
Wednesday June 18, 2003
FACT: Both, however, have supported and proposed legislation that would exacerbate the current crisis, and even harm the environment. According to 2001 testimony by Mary Hutzler, of the Energy Information Administration, the Clean Power Act (S. 366), which, like other Democratic-sponsored bills, caps carbon dioxide emissions, would increase natural gas prices 20 percent by 2020. An analysis by EPA pointed out that under S. 366, coal-fired power plants would have to be replaced by natural gas plants, placing further pressure on prices. Beyond the economics of the problem, because companies would be forced to relocate overseas, often to developing countries, which have weak, and in some cases, no environmental restrictions, Democrats and their green allies would undermine environmental protections. This, indeed, is the opinion of none other than the Sierra Club: “Poor nations are exacerbating enormous environmental problems.”
Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES)
Monday June 16, 2003
FACT: CERES would, for certain, get higher electricity prices, which in turn would erode economic growth and undermine investment. Dr. Margo Thorning of the American Council for Capital Formation, echoing the conclusions reached by numerous government and private analysts, said that, “[C]arbon caps would increase the price of electricity.” In her testimony before the EPW Committee on June 5, Thorning said, “As U.S. economic growth slows in response to higher electricity prices, demand for electricity falls and profits decline. Thus, by weakening demand for the product (electricity) carbon caps will increase the risk and uncertainty of investment in utilities.” What about for domestic manufacturers? “Carbon caps will make it harder for U.S. manufacturers to keep their operations at home and will increase the attractiveness of locating in areas like China…with no carbon emissions caps.”
Kyoto and the Cost of Natural Gas
Tuesday June 10, 2003
FACT: The following excerpt from a February 23, 2001 report by the Online News Hour is instructive:
ELIZABETH BRACKETT (reporter): Caridad Vasquez needed help. The gas bill to heat her home had tripled from the year before, and she couldn't pay it…
A $926-a-month Social Security disability check is the only source of income for Caridad and her 52-year- old husband Salvador. After 23 years as a factory worker, Vasquez lost his legs and much of his vision to diabetes. He's also had three strokes and triple bypass surgery. When the January gas bill for their small house jumped to $500, Caridad Vasquez had to start making some hard choices.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What's more important to you, paying the medicine for your husband or paying the gas bill?
CARIDAD VASQUEZ: (speaking through interpreter) Both things are important. The medicine, because he does need his medicine to survive and keep healthy the way he should. The other thing is where the gas is needed for the heating, for the hot water. He needs all this attention, so both are important.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Can you pay for both?
CARIDAD VASQUEZ: (speaking through interpreter)
No.
Environmentalists and Energy
Friday June 6, 2003
FACT: No, not even wind power is acceptable to environmentalists. As the New York Times reported yesterday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, is leading the effort against installation of the Nantucket Sound wind farm. Other environmentalists are pressuring the Long Island Power Authority to scrap its plan for wind turbines off the eastern tip of Long Island. Mr. Kennedy said he found "zero" irony in the fact that he had devoted himself to environmental advocacy and yet opposed the wind project on Cape Cod, his Kennedy grandparents' summer home. "There are appropriate places for everything," he said. "You would not want a wind farm in Yosemite, and you wouldn't want one in Central Park."
“To some environmentalists,” the Times wrote, “the opposition to wind power from within their ranks not only stifles the growth of a new source of energy but also calls into question the integrity of the environmental movement itself.”
Kyoto and Coal
Wednesday June 4, 2003
FACT: Environmentalists don’t like coal and support policies such as the Kyoto Protocol to eliminate its use. According to Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, the Kyoto Protocol, and, by extension, any domestic legislation that would unilaterally implement Kyoto, would put coal out of business. “Under Kyoto,” WEFA found, “coal consumption would be phased out over the period between 2010 and 2020. The result would be massive dislocations in coal producing areas.”
Money for Endagered Species
Thursday May 29, 2003
FACT: To pay for the flood of ‘critical habitat’ litigation brought about by environmental groups, whose legal war has undermined the very species they want to save. Big Green litigiousness is not a new phenomenon, of course, but one that also vexed Jamie Rappaport Clark, former head of the Clinton Fish and Wildlife Service. Clark said in 2000 that critical habitat lawsuits have “turned our priorities upside down.” More ominously, she said those lawsuits were creating a “biological disaster.” In testimony before Congress, the Clinton Fish and Wildlife said, “In most circumstances, the designation of ‘official’ critical habitat is of little additional value for most listed species.” So, one might ask, what’s the point of these “citizen suits?” Mr. Kieran Suckling, noted above, said it best: “You know what is so important about the spectacled eider [a sea duck]? That designation will be the only thing standing between George Bush and the oil rigs” (Sacramento Bee, April 24, 2001).
Greenpeace and Global Warming
Friday May 23, 2003
FACT: Among the many questions this provokes, one might ask: Won’t be a burden on whom, exactly? Greenpeace doesn’t elaborate, but according to a recent study by the Center for Energy and Economic Development, sponsored by the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, if the U.S. ratifies Kyoto, or passes domestic climate policies effectively implementing the treaty, the result would “disproportionately harm America’s minority communities, and place the economic advancement of millions of U.S. Blacks and Hispanics at risk.” Among the study’s key findings: Kyoto will cost 511,000 jobs held by Hispanic workers and 864,000 jobs held by Black workers; poverty rates for minority families will increase dramatically; and, because Kyoto will bring about higher energy prices, many minority businesses will be lost.
Hans Blix, David Hawkins and global warming
Tuesday May 20, 2003
FACT: Such global warming alarmism runs counter to the thinking of…the UN. The ministerial declaration from last year’s UN Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg found that eradicating poverty—not global warming—was the world’s most serious environmental challenge, particularly for developing countries. “We recognize,” the UN declared, “the reality that global society has the means and is endowed with the resources to address the challenges of poverty eradication and sustainable development confronting all humanity.” Conferees even gave a green light to “efficient, affordable, and cost-effective energy technologies, including fossil fuel technologies.” Seems Indira Gandhi had it right when she said, “Poverty is the worst polluter.”