What Trump and Sanders Said about Oil Prices 4 Years Ago by Daniel Bier

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Remember when complaining about the price of gas was all the rage? The public discourse was awash in pseudo-psychology, hand-wringing about “peak oil,” and an array of conspiracy theories to explain why oil cost so much.

There was much ado about corporate “greed” (the cause of all life’s problems), hissing about “speculators,” nationalist chest-thumping about OPEC, self-proclaimed experts warning that Earth was out of oil, and many inarticulate suspicions about George Bush and Barack Obama.

Economists were pretty sure that the price of oil was related to supply and demand, but what did they know? One cantankerous socialist knew the truth:

Pump prices spiked 5% in the past month… Crude oil prices stood at $108 on Friday, up from only double digits at the beginning of the month. …

What’s the cause? Forget what you may have read about the laws of supply and demand. Oil and gas prices have almost nothing to do with economic fundamentals.

Fortunately, when he wrote that in 2012, Sen. Bernie Sanders was ahead of the game, having never read anything about supply and demand at all. Unencumbered by basic economics, he was able to see that Big Oil “gouging” and Wall Street “speculators” were to blame.

Remarkably, right around the time of the fracking revolution, the price of oil and gas started tumbling. I guess Wall Street’s heart grew three sizes that day.

But Sanders didn’t have the only theory. One super smart billionaire figured out that Saudi Arabia was the real problem:

Look at what’s going on with your gasoline prices. They’re going to go to $5, $6, $7 and we don’t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, “Fellas, it’s time. It’s over. You’re not going to do it anymore.”

When Donald Trump diagnosed this problem in 2011, his solution wasn’t just to “call Saudi Arabia” and tell them “you’re not going to raise that f***ing price!” No, he had a practical measure: seize Iraq’s oil fields. “To the victor belong the spoils. You go in. You win the war and you take it.”

It’s worth remembering this mass hysteria, although the situation today is somewhat different. The price of oil is below $30 a barrel. The International Energy Agency has warned that the world is now “drowning” in oil.

This week, the price for a particularly low-quality type of oil briefly dipped to negative fifty cents a barrel. That is, producers actually had to pay the refinery to take their oil. Has greed been abolished from the land? Maybe. But there’s also a sensible explanation: the high-sulfur oil is expensive to transport and refine, but the producers still had to get rid of it somehow.

But just a few years ago, it would have been almost unthinkable for refineries to actively discourage oil production. At $140 a barrel, almost any kind of oil is worth refining. And here’s the upshot: it was precisely those high prices that prompted the massive investment in production, exploration, and innovation that led to fracking, the shale revolution, and today’s tumbling prices. It was greedy, profit-seeking oil companies who drove the price of oil down over 80% from its peak in 2008.

It’s important to grasp these lessons now, because at some point, the price of oil — or some other commodity — will rise again, and we will be greeted by the same parade of doomsayers, conspiracy theorists, and would-be regulators that we endured for the last decade.

They’re not gone, they’re not even hiding — they’re leading the race for president.

Bonus economics of gas story: On Monday, local news in Michigan reported that a bidding war between a couple of gas stations briefly resulted in prices below 50 cents a gallon. To understand just how weird this is, the wholesale price of gasoline is about $1.

Is this another sign of irrational generosity sweeping the petroleum industry? No. Gasoline is retailed at razor thin margins; gas is typically about 70% of a station’s revenue, but only 30% of its profit. Gas stations actually make most of their money selling food, cigarettes, and bottled water inside.

Occasionally, gasoline is used as a loss leader: stations will sell gas for cheap (even at a loss) to bring people to the pump, where they can then make more money selling high-margin items like bottled drinks and tobacco.

Daniel BierDaniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

Marco Rubio’s Recent Climate Change of Heart ‘Disingenuous’

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ken fieldsNEW YORK, NY /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In response to Marco Rubio’s recent campaign event in New Hampshire where the candidate appears to have made a climate change of heart and has called for America to be “number one in wind, and number one in solar, and number one in biofuels, and number one in renewables, number one in energy efficiency. Let’s lead in all of these things,” independent presidential candidate Ken Fields (pictured right) responded by saying:

“For someone who has so vehemently opposed any acknowledgement of the scientific consensus backing the evidence of human-caused climate change due to our planet’s reliance on fossil fuels, Rubio’s change of heart seems disingenuous at best. He has voted against energy efficiency and clean energy tax incentives. It’s hard to believe him.”

When pressed for further comment, Fields stated, “The recent and continued volatility in global oil markets should be evidence enough that energy security is not simply a matter of having and exploiting our own fossil fuel resources, but rather being completely independent of fossil fuels altogether.”

Fields officially launched his campaign last week on January 8th, 2016. His platform revolves around his slogan, “Greatness Must Be Earned” and to do great things, he has advocated the transition to 100% renewable energy for the country over the next 20 years. His policy plan includes, but is not limited to, creating the public and private mechanisms to encourage and nurture the financial markets to participate, a tax holiday for repatriated corporate capital that is invested in renewables and a carbon tax and dividend plan.

For further information on his policies and positions feel free to visit www.kenfields.net.

When Will the Presidential Candidates Debate America’s Energy Opportunity?

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Presidential debates are supposed to cover the issues that will most affect voters.

In this respect, every Presidential debate so far has failed, because none have discussed America’s single greatest opportunity, an opportunity that can help solve 8 of our toughest challenges and “make America great again.” This is America’s energy opportunity.

America has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to combine American innovation, American resources, and American freedom to create American energy abundance and become the world’s energy superpower, overtaking Russia and the Middle East.

The question is: Will we seize this opportunity or will we squander it?

You’ve heard the expression “there’s no silver bullet” for our problems but America’s energy opportunity is a silver bullet.

Energy is a uniquely consequential issue because the energy industry is the industry that powers every other industry. By creating American energy abundance and becoming the world’s energy superpower we can tackle eight key challenges at once.

  1. Jump-start the American economy

    Our challenge: We have been mired in recession or near-recession for a decade—and without the energy industry it would be much, much worse.

    Our opportunity: The same industry that has kept us out of desperate trouble can bring us to new heights, by producing and selling energy around the world.

  2. Create millions of well-paying job opportunities

    Our challenge: It is difficult for many Americans to find jobs, in large part thanks to onerous restrictions on industry that have shut down many companies.

    Our opportunity: A ramp-up in the US energy industry would create millions of productive, well-paying jobs.

  3. Lower your cost of living

    Our challenge: The US cost of living has been going up for decades, and when the prices of energy goes up, transportation, heating, and electric bills place a large burden on American business.

    Our opportunity: Energy affordability can lower the cost of our direct energy bills, saving thousands of dollars a year—and, because energy is part of every industry, it can lower the cost of everything we buy and do.

  4. Increase our industrial competitiveness

    Our challenge: Due largely to onerous government policies, American manufacturing has declined for decades, leaving far worse employment opportunities for those trained for industrial jobs.

    Our opportunity: Energy affordability dramatically lowers one of the largest manufacturing costs, and combined with liberating industry from irrational costs, it can make America a manufacturing hub.

  5. Shrink the deficit

    Our challenge: America has a massive, ever-growing deficit and debt, caused by a combination of reckless spending and a sluggish economy.

    Our opportunity: Doubling American energy production is our easiest path to economic growth and increased tax revenues without tax increases; coupled with a commitment to cutting spending we can finally be on a path to solvency.

  6. Increase national security

    Our challenge: Nations around the world threaten us, and one major difficulty we have in dealing with them is their enormous influence in world energy markets, particularly oil and gas.

    Our opportunity: America’s energy leadership will give America and her allies energy security from Russia and the Middle East, protecting both economic stability and foreign policy leverage.

  7. Fight global poverty

    Our challenge: Much of the world is still massively impoverished.

    Our opportunity: Energy abundance will make it more affordable for countries to industrialize and in particular to alleviate one of the most crucial aspects of poverty: energy poverty.

  8. Improve environmental quality worldwide

    Our challenge: Environmental concerns are always crucial—we want to be as productive as we can be but also have a clean, healthy environment, which many say is impossible with fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro.

    Our opportunity: Contrary to popular belief, the freedom to develop these sources won’t make our environment dirtier and our climate more dangerous, they will make our environment cleaner and our climate safer—because energy abundance dramatically improves environmental quality and climate safety.

Our politicians should be seizing all 8 of these opportunities. Instead, they are squandering them.

We can only create American energy abundance if we are free to choose, produce, transport the most abundant, affordable, reliable forms of energy—including hydrocarbons, nuclear, and hydro power.

Unfortunately, the Washington establishment has attacked every single one of these sources of energy abundance.

Instead of protecting the freedom to choose the best forms of energy, they are anti-choice and pro-subsidy.

Instead of protecting the freedom to produce the best forms of energy, they are anti-drilling and anti-mining.

Instead of protecting the freedom to transport energy where it is needed, they are anti-pipeline and anti-export terminals for coal, oil, and gas.

Instead of protecting the freedom to innovate in energy, they are anti-innovation in the most promising types of energy technologies, such as nuclear and fracking.

Washington could be making us into an energy superpower. Instead it is making us into an energy pawn.

How can we change course? We need to give our politicians an ultimatum: seize America’s energy opportunity—or lose our vote. That’s why I created a simple website, America’s Energy Opportunity, with an ultimatum you can sign and send to your elected officials.

If we do this together—by the hundreds, by the thousands, and ultimately by the millions—then our politicians and candidates will no longer be able to ignore America’s energy opportunity. And they just might seize it. Let’s demand that they do.

Disclosure: America’s Energy Opportunity has no affiliation with or funding from any party, industry, campaign, PAC, or other special interest. Its (very small) budget is entirely financed by my organization, the Center for Industrial Progress.

As always, if you’d like to suggest a new guest for Power Hour, or have me appear on your show, you can send me an email at support@industrialprogress.net, or just reply to this one.

RELATED ARTICLE: “The Economic Effects of Immediately Opening Federal Lands to Oil, Gas, and Coal Leasing,”

The Truth About Apple’s ‘100% Renewable’ Energy Usage

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Apple has been claiming, to great public acclaim, that it uses 100% renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind for many of its power needs, including its data centers.

From Apple’s website:

Since 2012, all our data centers have been powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources. That means no matter how much data they handle, there is a zero greenhouse gas impact on the environment from their energy use.

appleaccfrd

This is a lie.

Apple, like nearly every other international technology company in the world, gets the overwhelming percentage of its power from cheap, plentiful, reliable coal and almost none from expensive, unreliable solar and wind.

Click here to read the whole truth.

How the Energy Industry Makes Christmas (and Life) Magical

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I’m writing this from John Wayne Airport in Orange County, contemplating just one small example of the wondrous, high-energy world we live in. This morning I swam in the Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow I will be snowboarding at Snowbird, a resort in Utah. I hope I never lose the ability to appreciate how magical it is that human beings can roam the earth so quickly and freely.

It will take just over two hours to take me and my fellow passengers to Salt Lake City. If you ask any of them how they’re getting to Salt Lake City, they’d say “I’m flying.” But what does that mean? What it really means is that certain people are flying us–not just the pilot, co-pilot, and flight attendants, but also the airline that coordinates flights, the manufacturers that build planes, and, closest to my heart, the people who work day-in/day-out to fuel the planes–the people who work in the oil industry.

It’s important to think about energy not just in terms of fuels but in terms of people because it helps us think about things more justly. Certain individuals are taking once-useless ancient dead plants and transforming them into a state-of-the-art liquid hydrocarbon fuel (jet fuel) that we voluntarily pay for because it is the best way (by a long shot) to get us anywhere we want with almost magical speed. Yet, in popular vernacular this is an “addiction to fossil fuels” or “Big Oil selling us dirty energy.” This wildly inaccurate vernacular enables opponents of fossil fuels to perpetrate a horrendous injustice, as occurred recently in Paris. They can fly on planes, which means–choose to use the products created by the virtuous fossil fuel industry, on the implicit premise that the positives far outweigh the negatives–while condemning those who are carrying them through the sky.

This is my view: either use a product and take full moral responsibility for it–or don’t. Invent something better or wait till someone else invents something better or live like the 99% of human beings who didn’t have fossil fuels. But don’t spit on the people who make your life magical.

I’m not directing that sentiment toward subscribers to this list but rather the people and ideas you may well encounter during the Christmas season. I hope that these thoughts serve as a good reminder that the high ground belongs to those who create, with all the challenges that entails, not those who simply consume and criticize. And when you do meet creators during the Christmas season, thank them. Without what they do, we could not have the comfort and enjoyment that typifies this time of year.

On a related note, I’ll repeat a message from last week and remind you of 3 potential gifts that one of your loved ones might enjoy—or that you might enjoy for yourself. Each of these gifts is designed to be, above all, empowering.

How to Talk to Anyone About Energy

As you gather around the table this holiday season, you’re no doubt going to hear some inflammatory comments about our addiction to fossil fuels, climate change deniers, a renewable future, and fracking earthquakes. And you know that these comments can lead to long, drawn out, and ineffective discussions.

What if there were a way to make your discussions far more enjoyable and effective? In “How to Talk to Anyone About Energy” I’ve broken down the exact method I use to turn almost any conversation into a pleasant, influential, and to-the-point experience. The course includes 6 easy-to-understand video modules plus a database of powerful talking points, a flowchart of how to have an effective conversation, a checklist of rules to follow in every conversation, and real-life footage of the principles in action.

If you want to buy yourself a Christmas present, this may be the one to get. Or if you know a couple friends or students who would like to feel more confident in conversation, you can change their lives. I promise it will. In the words of one enrollee, “every time I [had] a discussion with others about fossil fuels and the environment it still always seem[ed] to end in an emotional ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’…. this course has provided me with a great framework with which to approach these conversations in a strategic way to persuade others without harming the relationship.”

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

Did you know The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels is available in hardcover, ebook, MP3 CD, and Audible? However you like to read (or listen).

You can also get large bulk discounts for your group or company—but you need to order this week.

I Love Fossil Fuels T-Shirts

I’ve found this shirt to be the perfect thing to wear to dozens of occasions—from anti-fossil fuel rallies to Presidential debates to family gatherings to beach parties. Get your own—I highly recommend green—make a confident statement and provoke lots of interesting conversation.

Click here to get the shirts.

Power Hour: Dr. Richard Keen on the Truth About Temperature

On the latest episode of Power Hour, I talk to Dr. Richard Keen, Meteorologist Emeritus at the University of Colorado and an official temperature measurement collector. Ever wonder where the numbers on global temperature graphs come from–and how accurate they are? Dr. Keen gives you an insider’s view.

Listen to this Power Hour episode.

As always, if you’d like to suggest a new guest for Power Hour, or have me appear on your show, you can send me an email at support@industrialprogress.net, or just reply to this one.

Why Is It Illegal to Sell Oil Overseas? by Nile Gardiner

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The U.S. House of Representatives voted to lift the 40 year-long ban on crude oil exports last month. The White House has already threatened to veto the measure if it passes the Senate. U.S. energy policy remains stuck in the 1970s, when tight restrictions were imposed by Washington on the export of U.S. crude oil in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, through the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and the Export Administration Act. Today, lifting the ban is vital to US interests.

The United States is the world’s largest oil producer (bigger than even Saudi Arabia), but exports just a tiny fraction of its oil abroad, to Canada and Mexico. The U.S. also has vast reserves of natural gas, which are not subject to an export ban, but the federal government tightly controls where American natural gas can be sent.

At present, only the 20 countries that have signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with Washington can automatically import US natural gas. No European countries have an FTA with the United States (due to the supranational nature of the European Union). Instead key US allies are energy dependent on a major American adversary, Russia.

Moscow exerts an extraordinary stranglehold over Europe’s energy needs, which poses an immense strategic and security risk across the Atlantic. Increasingly, Vladimir Putin’s aggressive regime will seek to weaken European opposition to Russian expansionism by threatening to withhold energy supplies at critically important moments, as it has done on several occasions with Ukraine.

Europe’s energy dependence on Russia is staggering. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Russia supplied “40 percent of the EU’s natural gas imports and almost 30 percent of its oil imports” in 2014. As the CRS points out, seven EU member states in Eastern and Central Europe depend almost entirely upon Russia for their natural gas needs, including the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Energy dependence is a major concern in parts of Western Europe as well, including in the EU’s largest economy, Germany, which derives 45 percent of its natural gas from Russian sources. Europe’s dependency on Russia will only grow in the next decade, as European use of natural gas increases, while domestic production falls. The inflow of money from the European Union is essential to the survival of Vladimir Putin’s regime and state-owned companies such as Gazprom that are home to Russia’s ruling class, with roughly half of Moscow’s tax revenues coming from oil and natural gas.

Loosening Russia’s energy grip is vital to US interests in Europe. By lifting restrictions on the export of natural gas to those countries most dependent upon Moscow, the United States will be able to weaken Russian influence and enhance the security of key NATO allies living in the shadow of the Russian bear. It is frightening to think that Moscow could hold the Baltic states hostage by simply switching off their natural gas supply.

It is time for the United States to advance an energy policy that improves the security and independence of its allies, and enhances America’s strategic influence abroad, while boosting the U.S. economy and creating jobs at home.

As the Heritage Foundation recently argued in a major report headed by economist Nicolas Loris, “free trade in energy bolsters national security by increasing supply diversity and providing choices for allies; it will have beneficial geopolitical implications for every region of the world.” This is a far better alternative to keeping in place outdated measures that weaken the transatlantic alliance while handing the initiative to authoritarian powers that threaten our interests.

This post first appeared at CapX.

Nile Gardner
Nile Gardner

Nile Gardiner is the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation.

Your Tax Dollars Are Blowing In The Wind

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Have you ever wondered just how much of your tax money is wasted on subsidies to industrial wind producers?

Well earlier this month, our partner organization, the Institute for Energy Research, released the most comprehensive study to date of the impacts of federal wind subsidies across all U.S. States.

As you would expect, the findings don’t paint a pretty picture.

IER analysts found that from 2005 to 2014, the cumulative subsidy allocations from the PTC, ITC, and Section 1603 to the wind industry are at least $18.58 billion!

The study also found that over the last decade, taxpayers in 30 states and the District of Columbia paid more in taxes to the federal government to support wind subsidies than wind producers who own wind facilities in those states received in subsidy allocations.

Although the report discusses states and regions in terms of net losses and net subsidies to show the geographical distribution of federal wind subsidies, subsidies to wind producers come at the expense of all U.S. taxpayers.

This really is a shame considering how inefficient and unreliable wind is as a source of energy.

The environmental left often claims that wind is the “energy of the future” and “cost competitive” with all sources of energy. But if that really is the case why do they insist on billions of dollars in taxpayer money just to survive?

Instead, we should remove these federal subsidies and let the market decide what energy sources really are the most affordable, abundant, and reliable.

Exposing the impact of subsidies to industrial wind producers is a good step in that direction.

To learn more, please check out our full wind subsidy study from our partner organization, the Institute for Energy Research.

How to Win Hearts and Minds: From Energy Supporter to Energy Advocate

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In the 2016 election I want to make energy abundance a winning issue—which means that more candidates run on and win on a platform of energy abundance, in contrast to the energy poverty policies many of today’s candidates advocate.

Chances are that if you are on this list, you do, too. But what can you do?

In the next several months out I’ll be rolling out a national energy campaign to impact the 2016 election. But in the meantime, and to prepare for that, there’s a lot you can do to make yourself, your loved ones, or your company incredibly effective at winning hearts and minds on energy.

To understand how, it’s important to understand the 3 key transformations that energy influencers can go through:

  1. From supporter to advocate
  2. From advocate to champion
  3. From champion to thought-leader

Today I’ll discuss the transformation from supporter to advocate.

From Supporter to Advocate

Energy Supporter: An individual who is generally in favor of the most important sources of energy abundance, including fossil fuels, but lacks the motivation and/or capability to persuade others in favor of energy abundance.

Energy Advocate: An individual with the clarity, confidence, and motivation to persuade others in favor of energy abundance.

To become an advocate, an energy supporter requires a) dramatically increased clarity and b) effective tactics to communicate with different audiences.

Clarity is the most important. If you are clear enough about a moral issue you will inevitably become an advocate if not a champion.

Thus, our number one recommendation is to read and/or assign The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, which clearly and systematically lays out the moral case for energy abundance in general and fossil fuel energy in particular. In addition, we produce a large amount of online content delivered via social media, email, and websites to enhance clarity on the most current controversies. (See our Facebook, Twitter, and website.)

As a supporter pursues dramatically enhanced clarity, it is important that they simultaneously learn the art of communication—particularly one-on-one communication.

For various reasons there are very, very few individuals who are effective at changing people’s minds on energy one-on-one, so I am currently developing a course called “How to talk to anyone about energy,” available in the next month. If that interests you, let me know, and I’ll prioritize it even more.

In the meantime, we have several online lectures and papers about how to reframe the debate, including “The Key to Winning Hearts and Minds” and “Arguing to 0 vs. Arguing to 100.”

For examples of what’s possible, see the Hearts and Minds section of this newsletter.

If you are a company trying to turn supporters into advocates, and I believe every company should, it is important to motivate employees to learn about the case for their industry—and how to make it. One way to do this is to hold a speech in front of a large group of employees, ideally broadcast to the entire company. Depending on what makes sense for a company, we offer several free video speeches to show, remote speeches and Q&A, or in-person speeches. This gets everyone motivated and gives a common frame of reference. Combined with employee copies of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels which, in bulk, can include a custom page with a message from your company, you are certain to empower a large percentage of your employees to go from supporters to advocates. If you haven’t read it, make sure to check out the story of how Pioneer Resources did just this.

In our next newsletter, I’ll discuss the transformation from energy advocate to energy champion—an individual with a high level of clarity, confidence, and motivation who reaches dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of others.

Power Hour: Steve Hayward on All Things Energy

On the latest episode of Power Hour, “polymath” Steve Hayward and I have a free-flowing discussing of the global energy landscape, from Russian gas to US solar.

Download Episode 118 with Steven Hayward

Subscribe to Power Hour on iTunes

As always, if you’d like to suggest a new guest for Power Hour, or have me appear on your show, you can send me an email at support@industrialprogress.net, or just reply to this one.

President Obama’s Absurd Reasons for Rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline

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President Obama tossed economics and science out the window and onto the White House lawn when he rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.

After leaving it in bureaucratic limbo for seven years, the president claimed the project–which would safely transport Canadian and American crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries–would have little economic effect and would hurt U.S. leadership in reducing carbon emissions.

Both claims are bunk, as the State Department’s analysis shows.

Let’s first take up President Obama’s economic argument.

“The pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy,” President Obama said at a White House event.

The State Department’s analysis disagrees:

  • 42,000 jobs would be created.
  • $3.4 billion would be added to the U.S. economy.
  • $405 million would be earned by workers building the pipeline in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
  • $55 million in property tax revenue would go to local communities.

Not only did President Obama tossed aside the Keystone XL pipeline’s economic benefits, he also ignored the science showing that the project’s environmental effects will be minimal.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” President Obama said. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.”

The only thing the Keystone XL pipeline would undercut it America’s reliance on oil from unfriendly countries. It certainly wouldn’t undercut efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

In fact, the State Department found that not building the pipeline would result in higher greenhouse gas emissions, increases ranging anywhere from 28%-42%.

Impacts of Keystone XL alternatives [table]

But as Phil Kerpen tweeted, the administration is more concerned about perception than real science.

The truth is, our president–a “science geek” according to his top science advisor–rejected science and instead chose to side with anti-energy opponents of the pipeline.

The reaction to President Obama’s decision was strong and swift.

“In rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama has put politics before the best interests of the country,” said U.S. Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue. “Rejecting Keystone breaks two promises the president made—to put jobs and growth first and to seek bipartisan solutions.”

President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute Jack Gerard said: “This decision will cost thousands of jobs and is an assault to American workers. It’s politics at its worst.”

Labor union leaders were beyond disappointed.

Terry O’Sullivan, general president for Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), saidPresident Obama threw “hard-working, blue-collar workers under the bus.”

On a press call, Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, called the Keystone XL pipeline, “a victim of the radical environmental movement.” The jobs lost by President Obama’s decision “are real jobs for real people supporting real families.”

Before he flies off to Paris, President Obama should order Air Force One to head west. He himself should visit people living along the pipeline’s route and explain why they can’t have the jobs, the economic growth, and the local tax revenue that would come from the pipeline. As I wrote in 2014:

Bonnie Davidson of the Glasgow Courier said that local residents were scratching their head as to what the controversy is with the pipeline. She told me she hopes that if the Obama administration denies the permit someone should come to Glasgow and tell them why.

Those people deserve to be told why he took those opportunities away from them.

MORE ARTICLES ON: ENERGY

RELATED ARTICLE: New York Attorney General Tries to Criminalize Scientific Dissent on Climate Change

Asia Will Build 500 Coal-Fired Power Plants This Year No Matter What the U.S. Does

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Two stories about coal use in Asia highlight the futility of EPA’s efforts to reduce global carbon emissions by straightjacketing the U.S. economy with draconian carbon regulations.

First, there’s The New York Times story that China has been using more coal than anyone thought:

China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases from coal, has been burning up to 17 percent more coal a year than the government previously disclosed, according to newly released data. The finding could complicate the already difficult efforts to limit global warming.

Even for a country of China’s size, the scale of the correction is immense. The sharp upward revision in official figures means that China has released much more carbon dioxide — almost a billion more tons a year according to initial calculations — than previously estimated.

The increase alone is greater than the whole German economy emits annually from fossil fuels.

…

The new data, which appeared recently in an energy statistics yearbook published without fanfare by China’s statistical agency, show that coal consumption has been underestimated since 2000, and particularly in recent years. The revisions were based on a census of the economy in 2013 that exposed gaps in data collection, especially from small companies and factories.

Illustrating the scale of the revision, the new figures add about 600 million tons to China’s coal consumption in 2012 — an amount equivalent to more than 70 percent of the total coal used annually by the United States.

To borrow from the management mantra, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

China has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions from a peak level “around” 2030–assuming anyone knows how much is being produced by then.  However, this pledge isn’t anything exceptional. It’s “little more than business as usual,” writes the Institute for 21st Century Energy’s Stephen Eule. “In other words, the Chinese have committed to doing what they are doing already.”

The second story is that Asia’s appetite coal for it isn’t letting up [h/t GWPF]:

While much attention has been given to a potential peak in China’s coal demand and worries about emissions, in Asia alone this year power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with at least a thousand more on planning boards. Coal is not only cheaper than natural gas, it is often available locally and has no heavy import costs.

…

“Electricity is increasing its share in total energy consumption and coal is increasing its share in power generation,” said Laszlo Varro, head of the gas, coal and power markets division for the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Some of the biggest growth in coal use is in India, where it meets 45 percent of total energy demand, compared with just over 20 percent each for petroleum products and biomass/waste.

“We’re absolutely sure India’s coal demand will continue to grow,” Varro said.

Coal will continue to be used in developing countries because it’s a cheap source of electricity. To think U.S. negotiators at upcoming climate talks in Paris will be able to convince China and India to abstain from using cheap energy to better the lives of their citizens is living in a fantasy world.

These facts won’t stop the Obama administration from touting EPA’s Clean Power Plan as the United States’ key contribution to the Paris talks. For them it’s full speed ahead to push aside cheap and abundant coal as a source of electricity no matter the costs to our economy.

As Eule writes:

What’s more of a mystery is why the administration is content to throw away the United States’ energy edge in favor of an agreement that will put us at a competitive disadvantage for no discernible environmental impact. In fact, when other nations choose not to impose carbon restrictions as stringent as those in the U.S., we will be likely to see “carbon leakage,” where emissions are not reduced at all, and instead simply moved (along with the jobs that come with them) to our global competitors.

RELATED ARTICLES:

New York Attorney General Tries to Criminalize Scientific Dissent on Climate Change

Spooking Small Businesses: Scary Regulations Lurking in Washington by J.D. HARRISON

The Wide Canyon Between Carbon Regulations and the Real World by  SEAN HACKBARTH

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a coal-fired electric power plan in Datong, China. Photo credit: Stefen Chow/Bloomberg,

Poll: 78% of Colorado voters favor increased U.S. oil and natural gas development

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DENVER, Colorado /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — For the 2016 election, 68 percent of registered Colorado voters say they are more likely to support a candidate who supports producing more oil and natural gas, according to a new telephone poll conducted for the Colorado Petroleum Council (CPC) by Harris Poll among 604 registered Colorado voters.

“This poll shows that energy is a top issue for voters next year because it plays a key role in job creation and economic growth,” said Tracee Bentley, executive director of the CPC. “Colorado voters understand the opportunities that pro-development policies create and the need for an all-of-the-above energy policy that helps produce more domestic energy and lower energy costs for American consumers.”

Seventy-eight percent of registered Colorado voters support increased production of oil and natural gas resources located here in the U.S., and the poll also found that:

  • Majorities of Republicans (95 percent), Independents (84 percent) and Democrats (69 percent) say that producing more oil and natural gas here in the U.S. is important to them.
  • Majorities of registered voters believe increased access could help:
    • create jobs (85 percent),
    • strengthen energy security (83 percent), and
    • lower consumer energy costs (79 percent).

“Candidates in tomorrow’s debate should take this opportunity to discuss the smart energy policies that concern Coloradans, growing our nation’s still shaky economy, creating well-paying jobs and maintaining our nation’s global energy leadership,” said Bentley. “That includes expanding access to domestic oil and natural gas resources, ending the ban on crude oil exports, repealing the RFS, approving the Keystone XL pipeline, and reining in duplicative and unnecessary regulations.”

The CPC is a division of API, which represents all segments of America’s oil and natural gas industry. Its more than 625 members produce, process, and distribute most of the nation’s energy. The industry also supports 9.8 million U.S. jobs and 8 percent of the U.S. economy.

Methodology

The study was conducted October 15-18, 2015, by telephone by Harris Poll on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute among 604 registered voters in Colorado, with a sampling error of +/- 4 percent. A full methodology is available upon request.

“What America is Thinking on Energy Issues” is a public opinion series provided by API, offering data to inform policy discussions and ensure policymakers and others know Americans’ perspectives on key energy issues.

RELATED ARTICLE: Obama’s carbon reduction plan under attack from 24 states and Republicans

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of a Colorado oil drilling rig is via Facebook.

Four Fallacies that Fracktivists Use to Scare You

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To make intelligent decisions about the future of energy, we need to think big-picture—to look carefully at the benefits and costs to human life of every course of action. Unfortunately, in today’s energy debate we are taught, with politically incorrect forms of energy such as fossil fuels, to only look at the negative picture—often highly exaggerated or taken out of context.

How do we identify and counter this cultural bias against fossil fuels? That’s the topic of my latest Forbes column:

There are at least four common fallacies used to discourage big-picture thinking and breed opposition to fossil fuels. These are things to be on the lookout for when you follow the cultural debate; they are everywhere, and all four are used to attack what might be the most important technology of our generation: shale energy aka “fracking.”

The largest fossil fuel controversy today, besides the broader climate change issue, is fracking—shorthand for hydraulic fracturing—one of several key technologies for getting oil and gas out of dense shale rock, resources that exist in enormous quantities but had previously been inaccessible at low cost.

Fracking has gotten attention, not primarily because of the productivity revolution it has created, but because of concerns about groundwater contamination. The leading source of this view is celebrity filmmaker Josh Fox’s Gasland (so-called) documentaries on HBO. Looking at how these movies have affected public opinion is an instructive exercise.

VIDEO: Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel

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Here’s my YouTube interview with Internet sensation Stefan Molyneux. Check it out.

Power Hour: Pierre Desrochers on The Bet

On the latest episode of Power Hour, I talk to Pierre Desrochers about the 25th anniversary of the momentous bet between resource theorists Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon.

Download Episode 113 with Pierre Desrochers

Subscribe to Power Hour on iTunes

Energy Liberation Plan Update

As you may remember, the Energy Liberation Plan was slated to be released today. I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that it will not be out today.

The good news is the reason for the delay: there has been so much interest shown in the plan by major political players, that we’re taking the time to work with them and create a full-blown national campaign with an even better shot at impacting the candidates’ energy positions in 2016. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, my Forbes column announcing the Energy Liberation Plan features a preview/introduction, and if you’d like me to appear on your show (or at an event) to discuss it, you can send me an email at support@industrialprogress.net, or just reply to this one.

Florida must become energy independent by 2020

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What will promote human life? What will promote human flourishing — realizing the full potential of life? How do we maximize the years in our life and the life in our years? Answer: cheap and reliable power.

Organic Fossil Fuels are the Lifeblood of Civilization!

Florida’s Governor, Congressional delegation and state legislature must make it their number 1 priority to make the Sunshine State Energy Independent by 2020 or sooner!

Florida:

  1. Imports all of its natural gas and 99.9 % of its oil.
  2. Imports all of its refined petroleum based products (e.g. gasoline).
  3. Is the second largest user of natural gas, Texas being the largest.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

  1. Geologists believe there may be large oil and natural gas deposits in the federal Outer Continental Shelf off of Florida’s western coast.
  2. Florida was second only to Texas in 2014 in net electricity generation from natural gas, which accounted for 61% of Florida’s net generation; coal accounted for almost 23%, the state’s nuclear power plants accounted for 12%, and other resources, including renewable energy, supplied the remaining electricity generation.
  3. Renewable energy accounted for 2.3% of Florida’s total net electricity generation in 2014, and the state ranked 10th in the nation in net generation from utility-scale solar energy.
  4. In part because of high air conditioning use during the hot summer months and the widespread use of electricity for home heating during the winter months, Florida’s retail electricity sales to the residential sector were second in the nation after Texas in 2014.
  5. Electricity accounts for 90% of the site energy consumed by Florida households, and the annual electricity expenditures of $1,900 are 40% higher than the U.S. average, according to EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey.

Even as human populations have grown dramatically and increased their use of fossil fuels, the world has become a much better place.

As CO2 emissions have risen so too have the GDP per person, life expectancy and the population.

Florida politicians are addicted to the precautionary principle (“better safe than sorry”). It is a maxim embraced by government planners and regulators in the Sunshine state at every level. They do not even want to determine what organic fossil fuels lay off of Florida’s coastlines. The precautionary principle worked to stop the building of nuclear power plants in the United States after the 3 Mile Island incident. Today the same tactic is being used to stop off shore drilling using the Deepwater Horizon incident.

Off shore drilling naysayers use the example of the Deepwater Horizon spill to strike fear into the hearts of Floridians. But as FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  An example of using the fear factor (precautionary principle) is what happened in Japan following the meltdown of a nuclear power plan in Fukushima. The facts are that no one has died from radiation, nor has cancer increased however, 1,600 did die of stress due to the unnecessary evacuation of people from the area.

Fear kills.

What off shore naysayers, fear mongers, don’t tell you is that mother nature is the greatest polluter in the Gulf of Mexico. According to NOAA over 2,500 barrels of oil naturally seeps daily from fissures in the Gulf. This seeping has been going on for tens of thousands of years, yet the Gulf is doing just fine. Would it not be better to capture this oil, and natural gas, than have it continue to seep into the Gulf?

Some argue that even if natural gas is discovered in Florida’s waters that building an on shore natural gas processing plant is not economically feasible or politically doable. There is an answer to this negative with a positive via new technology. Israel is faced with the same concerns about onshore natural gas processing plants. To solve the problem Nobel Energy and Shell Oil have come up with a solution. Process the natural gas using floating plants. According to Robert Sullivan of the New York Times:

It’s called Prelude, and it’s bigger than big. More than 530 yards long and 80 yards wide, it was constructed with 260,000 metric tons of steel, more than was used in the entire original World Trade Center complex, and it’s expected to displace 600,000 metric tons of water, or as much as six aircraft carriers. Even the paint job is huge: Most big vessels dry-dock every five years for a new coat, but Prelude’s paint is supposed to last 25 years. It will produce more natural gas than Hong Kong needs in a year. And it’s so big that you can’t really photograph it, at least not all at once.

[ … ]

What makes this giant liquefied-natural-gas enterprise feasible, paradoxically enough, is the miniaturization its construction represents. It’s much smaller than landlocked equivalents — imagine shrinking your local refinery until it fits on a barge. Shell Oil, which has the biggest stake in the project, describes Prelude as more environmentally friendly than an onshore site. There are no estuaries under threat, no shorelines to run pipe across and reduced risks to population centers, given the explosiveness of natural gas. And it is designed to ride out extreme weather, thanks to three giant 6,700-horsepower thrusters that can turn it into the wind and waves. “These are the things that the naval architects had to worry through,” says Robert Bea, co-founder of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, at the University of California, Berkeley. “It works like a big-ass weather vane.”

Read more.

Environmentalists use the fear factor when talking about drilling for natural gas and oil off of Florida’s shores. The same is true for some of Florida’s Congressional delegation, such as Rep. Vern Buchanan. Fear is not good public policy.

What is good public policy is insuring that Floridians have access to cheap and reliable power in the foreseeable future. Now it the time to take action. Waiting is not an option.

If Governor Rick Scott and Republicans are committed to creating jobs, then they must diversify the economy by promoting energy independence. Energy independence will lead to reduced costs for electricity, gasoline and diversify the economy. That is good public policy.

RELATED ARTICLE: Miami-Dade County school district accepts BP oil spill settlement, sets maximum tax rate

At Fukushima, Fear Was More Deadly than Radiation by Daniel Bier

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The precautionary principle (“better safe than sorry”) is a maxim embraced by government planners and regulators the world over, from GMOs to pharmaceuticals to the environment. The argument is that it’s better to act on fears preemptively than it is to “do nothing” and wait until there’s a problem.

But often, overreaction can be more costly than the original problem. Precaution becomes panic, and moderating risk devolves into the blind urge to “just do something.”

An article by George Johnson in the New York Times explains the deadly consequences of the Japanese government’s panicky stampede after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.

No one has been killed or sickened by the radiation — a point confirmed last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even among Fukushima workers, the number of additional cancer cases in coming years is expected to be so low as to be undetectable, a blip impossible to discern against the statistical background noise.

But about 1,600 people died from the stress of the evacuation — one that some scientists believe was not justified by the relatively moderate radiation levels at the Japanese nuclear plant. …

“The government basically panicked,” said Dr. Mohan Doss, a medical physicist who spoke at the Tokyo meeting, when I called him at his office at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “When you evacuate a hospital intensive care unit, you cannot take patients to a high school and expect them to survive.”

Among other victims were residents of nursing homes. And there were the suicides. “It was the fear of radiation that ended up killing people,” he said.

Doss estimates that in the hot spots, with the highest levels of radioactivity, residents would have gotten 70 millisieverts of radiation over four years (a dose equal to one full body scan a year).

But those hot spots were anomalies.

By Dr. Doss’s calculations, most residents would have received much less, about 4 millisieverts a year. The average annual exposure from the natural background radiation of the earth is 2.4 millisieverts. …

A full sievert of radiation is believed to eventually cause fatal cancers in about 5 percent of the people exposed. Under the linear no-threshold model, a millisievert would impose one one-thousandth of the risk: 0.005 percent, or five deadly cancers in a population of 100,000.

About twice that many people were evacuated from a 20-kilometer area near the Fukushima reactors. By avoiding what would have been an average cumulative exposure of 16 millisieverts, the number of cancer deaths prevented was perhaps 160, or 10 percent of the total who died in the evacuation itself.

That would be bad enough, but it’s not clear if the “linear model” of radiation exposure is even accurate. The assumption is that all radiation is equally bad for you, and there’s no safe level of exposure, so your risk is in exact proportion with the level of exposure.

But Doss and others think low levels of radiation are not proportionally as bad for you as high levels, meaning that half the radiation is less than half as dangerous. In other words, a millisievert is not a thousandth as deadly as a full sievert — it’s much less than that, and it might not be bad for you at all.

“Better safe than sorry” sounds reasonable, but it can’t answer the question better for whom? When we’re talking about government policy, we have to remember that politicians and officials are not robots, blindly calculating the public good: they are people, with their own interests and incentives.

When there is a crisis (real or imagined), officials need to appear to do something. To keep us safe. To protect us from scary things, like radiation, toxins, and terrorists. That incentive is not identical to (and often not even compatible with) a rational cost-benefit analysis.

The evacuation of Fukushima was better for the officials in charge — they weredoing something — but it wasn’t safer for the people who died after being forcibly displaced.

There’s no perfect solution here. But it would have been much better to give people the freedom to move at their own pace and let them make informed choices about the risks, instead a rushed, terrifying evacuation from an inflated threat.

Johnson concludes, “We’re bad at balancing risks, we humans, and we live in a world of continual uncertainty. Trying to avoid the horrors we imagine, we risk creating ones that are real.”

I might add that when we mix them with politics, we risk inflicting them on everyone.

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.