Nick Sorrentino:
We like “green” energy. The water in my childhood home in the 80s was heated by solar panels. We like wind, and the rest. But we like it within the market.
Green energy can exist within the market despite what many people believe. In a world of 6 billion people and growing there is absolutely a market for cleaner energy sources. In many parts of the world solar particularly makes sense on micro levels. Lives can be made better with solar. Indeed the sun is a giant nuclear reactor in the sky. We should be able to better harness its power.
But there are some who say that the market simply doesn’t work fast enough. Government you see must intervene and force the market to capitulate. Climate change! It’s the end of the world if we don’t get off fossil fuels.
But it’s not the end of the world. Climate change, to the degree that it is human caused can be dealt with. Humans can adjust if need be. We are not a static species. The climate changes. A couple hundred years ago the Thames in London would freeze. But now London rarely sees snowflakes. Life went on. We likewise will adapt if need be. This is the part of the equation which always seems left out. The only thing which doesn’t change is that things change. And that includes climate – influenced by man or not. Keep markets free and to the degree there is any real distress in the future a solution will be found. That is what markets do.
Fracking, for instance for all of its bad press has drastically reduced the amount of carbon emissions the USA, the world’s largest economy, creates. And I mean dramatically. We are at early 1990s levels and dropping thanks to the natural gas made available by new fracking technologies. Such technology has also created a steady source of domestic energy, something the planners in Washington for decades told us was a thing of the past. For years one of the pushes by the green energy folks was that we needed to eliminate our “reliance on foreign oil.” Well, guess what? We basically did. Thanks to the market and despite massive regulatory headwinds from Washington DC. Now he have plenty of fuel for our needs.
The truth is some just hate fossil fuels. They hate the wealth it generates for some. They hate the scars upon the land it creates. (Pretty legitimately it seems to me. Oil and oil fields are pretty nasty.) They want to believe that green energy comes at no cost, and to the degree that it does cost something it should be shouldered by taxpayers in the name of the “planet.” A brave new world is within our grasp, if only we could crucify the oil companies.
It should also be mentioned that many who oppose traditional fuels have large vested interests in other fuel sources. Many very connected people see “green energy” as a green gravy train. The “stimulus” package at the beginning of Obama’s presidency was basically a huge payoff to connected “greens”. Now they want more.
I say these things as someone who – I promise this is true – tried to cajole his children (unsuccessfully) into hugging a 200 year old oak tree last Sunday. I love the ocean, and the mountains, and the forest, and birding, and hiking. I like to spend my spare time in nature. I love nature. I have since I was a wee bairn. So don’t dismiss my analysis at that of some Humvee driving raccoon squasher. I like green stuff.
That’s why I have to call out the idiocy of Mr. Obama’s $10 per barrel tax proposal. It truly is stupid on just a colossal scale. Bone headed. And I hate to say it, likely vindictive.
Of course this is also the same guy who came out on Friday and tried to tell the country that the job situation was great in America. He says this in the face of an emerging global slowdown, very likely a significant recession. So maybe he’s just out to lunch.
And the recession is already starting to be felt in some parts of the USA, namely the Great Plains, where fracking was booming, where the only real jobs post-2008 have been created, but which have now fallen on hard times because the Saudis turned on the oil spigots in response to Obama’s warming to Iran, and while the Chinese economy (and it’s insatiable demand for oil) started to slow. In a very real sense the slowdown which appears to be happening is to some degree as a result of Obama’s poor Middle Eastern diplomatic performance.
But now, Obama wants to heap a 10$ per barrel tax on oil? That is insane. Such a tax hits the poorest most. Those who live in rural areas who must drive to work. People who heat their homes with oil. Truckers. All manner of industry. Food prices etc.
But the donors who live in San Francisco and New York see such things as simply the collateral damage of a “greener” country/planet. They, it is my sense anyway, don’t really care about the guy in the field in North Dakota trying to provide for his family. That guy’s a yokel anyway, and probably works for Koch Industries. So he deserves to feel pain. To make an omelet, as Lenin said, one must break a few eggs.
If it had only been covered in oil, the Left might have cared.
Pentagon orders commanders to prioritize climate change in all military actions
Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer and U.S. Central Command planner, said climate change is typically measured in long stretches of time:
“The climate does change over great periods of time, typically measured in millennia, though sometimes in centuries,” he said. “But the document mentions accounting for such down to the level of changes in ‘tactics, techniques and procedures’ as if reviewing how a squad conducts a patrol should be accorded the same level of importance and attention as determining whether the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, might have to be relocated as sea levels rise over the next 100 years.”
Climate change must be integrated in:
• Weapons buying and testing “across the life cycle of weapons systems, platforms and equipment.” (Less than a millennia)
• Training ranges and capabilities. (Less than a millennia)
• Defense intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. (Less than a millennia)
• Defense education and training. (WAY less than a millennia)
• Combatant commander joint training with allies to “assess the risks to U.S. security interests posed by climate change.” (Less than a millennia)
Wash Times
Obama might mean WEATHER.
You know, are our troops and their equipment capable of functioning fully in all of earth’s various weathers?
Not ”climate change” over centuries.
Not even our female soldiers are planning on staying in the military for centuries.
And guns, missiles, tanks, ships and planes all have shorter lives than centuries.
What a wasteful idiot Obama is.
Now, is Rubio correct?
Is Obama doing this on purpose to waste trillions or is he simply pandering to his Leftists on our dime.