Well, here is another reason to hate hippy, tree-huggers—the latest rise in the price and eventual ban of R-22 Freon.

Evidence of how tree-huggers, armed with the pseudoscience surrounding environmental politics, harm the economy is a memo recently received by a family member of mine who works in the refrigerant supply business.

The company sent the missive to alert suppliers that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has mandated an additional 45 percent reduction in Freon R-22 production for 2012, which as resulted in manufacturers raising prices as much as $3 per-pound.

Since R-22 is the type of Freon used in most commercial and residential units—about 90 percent of them— that means that it just got a lot more expensive to maintain units that keep people and goods cool. That’s especially bad news if you live in sweltering southern states like Louisiana, where folks sweat like a whore in church—as my father might say—for about half the year.

The federal government has been working to phase out R-22 for the last 20 years or so, since the U.S. signed the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty to do away with Freon. This came about during the zenith of the ozone layer hole over the Antarctic hysteria. Production of the gas has to be completely banned in the U.S. by 2015.

It was said that the ozone was being destroyed by Freon chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) and would lead to global warming and kill us all. The theory was later revised to say that the ozone layer hole would lead to global cooling and kill us all.

Either way, hippies and Captain Planet said that we would be screwed if we didn’t get rid of R-22. Regulations were enacted and a cooling chemical that was selling for about $1 a pound wholesale has now increased to over $12 a pound.

You don’t hear much about the ozone hole these days, because there really isn’t one anymore.

Environmentalist use this as evidence that CFC regulations have worked. Funny thing is that it wasn’t too many years ago they were telling us–to help step-up regulations–that it would take as long as 80 years to reduce CFC in the atmosphere because they hang around so long. Which is it?

Moreover, new science has shows that the size of the ozone layer is the result of cyclical weather patterns and sun activity. Those who questioned that CFCs were causing an ozone depletion over the South Pole also pointed out that there should have been a hole over the North Pole, since CFC emissions are greater in the northern hemisphere.

The people who are really getting screwed are those who can’t afford to buy new units or have them retrofitted to accept different coolants. So, poor people are being hurt by this the most. Everyone will have to pay, however, even those of us with air conditioning that doesn’t require R-22.

Since most supermarkets use R-22 units, the increase in cost will mean a rise in food prices. Other things are bound to go up as well, the price to keep things like temperature sensitive medications and other perishables are passed on to consumers.

“People don’t realize how much this is going to cost. This is going to hurt people, it really will. Food prices will have to go up, everything will go up,” I was told this morning by someone who has worked in the refrigeration business for many years.

And here is the real kicker to this—air condition units that don’t use R-22 take more sucking and discharge pressure to operate, meaning they use more electricity. So much for saving the planet.

You might be asking how our politicians consistently end up making such bad decisions, such as involving us in treaties like Montreal Protocol. It’s because they listen to people like this, who sadly end up dictating much that happens in our economy:

It’s not hard to discern the reporter’s opinion—this is The Los Angeles Times, after all—of the “skepticism concerning the broad scientific consensus” that has “seeped into classrooms.”

The article references the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), signed in 2008 by Gov. Jindal. The Louisiana law requires the state Board of Education to assist school administrators in promoting critical thinking on scientific theories to school kids, singling out “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

The story also mentions similar laws in Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma, as well as resolutions against mind-numbed acceptance of global warming theories in South Dakota and Utah. Interestingly, the newspaper doesn’t mention laws that mandated teaching a one-sided global warming agenda in California schools that was passed by that state’s legislature a few years back and vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Louisiana law is designed to get both sides of the argument into classrooms—an anathema to progressives. The story mentions a school board in Los Alamitos, Calif. passing a measure for balanced instruction that was later rescinded.

Progressives need not fear an opposing argument making, because help is on the way to assure that critical thinking about a controversial scientific topic is never allowed to “seep” into the classroom.

The National Center for Science Education, an Oakland-based pro-global warming advocacy group billed as a “watch-dog” organization, announced on Monday that it will start to monitor global warming teaching to “evaluate the sources of resistance to it.”

And why is the Louisiana law the right way to go in instructing kids on global warming—now called climate change by progressives, in a thinly veiled attempt to save face after being confronted with evidence that the world isn’t really getting any warmer?

It’s because there is a whole lot of division in the scientific community over global warming, despite The Los Angeles Times story telling us, “Climatologists say man-made climate change is not scientifically controversial.”

If there weren’t, you would have around 31,000 signatures of scientist on a petition with these words:

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Canada, Japan and Russia are backing out of Kyoto because growing evidence like the uncovering of emails exchanged by scientist, showing that information had been falsified to support the agenda of global warming alarmist that–in many cases–work to keep government money flowing to their research.

And there is big money to be made by those who push global warming, another reason for healthy skepticism. There is no reason to doubt these scientists’ integrity, according to Al Gore, who has gotten super-rich from global warming hysteria. They are nothing like the scurrilous scientist who took money from tobacco companies to spread lies:

To me, this whole man-made global warming thing should really never be too hard to debunk if you use a little common sense.

It’s obvious why politicians and others push it for power and money and it should be just as obvious how silly it is to believe that laws can be passed to stop the climate from changing on this revolving sphere we call home.

Here is a quick visual history lesson for those who might be confused.

This is what the whole planet pretty much  looked like around 60 to 90 million years ago. Kinda reminds me of present day Louisiana—even the critters do:

A few years back, a guy I know was walking along a creek not far from where I live and stumbled over a mastodon skeleton that had been there since the world looked about like this—some 10,000 years back:

And here is what the earth looked like about four-billion years ago:

Got it? The point is that the earth’s climate has never been static and will never be—no matter what stupid laws are passes.

Things are going to change.

They always have and always will.  Animals die off if they can’t adapt. We will have to adapt, as well, to survive. It’s the height of human arrogance to think that we can change the weather and all industrializing we do to feed our hubris will only impoverish third-word people all the more and lead to the starving of millions.

One day, future generations will look back on global warming theories with scorn, much the way we look at flawed science that led physicians to believe that you had to bleed a patient to cure him. George Washington was killed by bloodletting that was performed in order to save him from a bad bout of pneumonia.

Let’s hope that global warming alarmist won’t bleed the world’s economy dry the same way. Here is your global warming consensus:

The Senate today passed the compromise legislation to continue the Bush tax credits.  Within that legislation were production tax credits for bio-diesel and renewable diesel fuels, credits for steel industry fuel, alternative vehicle fuels, and an extension of the 45 cents per gallon tax credit for ethanol blending in gasoline.

This is not good policy, and conservatives who just booted this Congress to the curb should be outraged, and vocally so.  We just elected a conservative House and a less progressive Senate because we’re tired of this kind of governance, yet we’re sitting idly by while the lame ducks continue to push through their agenda!  This legislation should be voted down, and then taken up in the new Congress on a straight-up vote on extending, or making permanent, the Bush rates.  Our only hope now lies with Nancy Pelosi’s House.

Ethanol is good for only two things –

fraternity parties and corn farmers.  It is bad for automobiles, bad for the environment, bad for fuel economy, and bad for the Gulf of Mexico, where runoff from over-fertilized farms in the Midwest results in a dead zone that grows larger with each ethanol incentivized year.

Even Al Gore has admitted that the politics and promotions that supported ethanol utilization as a transportation fuel supplement are lies!

Why are conservatives sitting idly by and letting this happen?  Are we so enamored that Obama compromised on the tax deal that we don’t care what it includes?  Do we have so little confidence in the Congress we just elected that we’ll accept anything to get the tax credits extended?

It’s been said that “he who laughs last, laughs loudest.”  Terminated Representatives and Senators will be laughing all the way to their speaking engagements, book tours, guest spots on Letterman, and ambassadorships if we allow this excrement to go through.

Get mad, again!  The fight is not over, and our work is not done.  We can’t rest on our laurels to prepare for the 2012 election cycle.  The 2010 Congress has not gone home.

Should hydraulic fracturing for the recovery of natural gas from shale formations be regulated by individual states where drilling activity is occurring, or by energy czar Carol Browner and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson?  Nowhere is the battle waging more fiercely than in the state of New York.

Several months ago we reported that the state Senate in New York had called for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the state.  We later learned that the impetus for that moratorium was being funded by George Soros.  Most recently we reported that the state Assembly had passed the moratorium and sent it to outgoing governor David Patterson for signature.

He vetoed it.  Patterson vetoed a moratorium on all natural gas permits in the state through May 15, and issued an Executive Order banning fracturing of only horizontal wells, until July 1.  Recognizing the economic negatives of staying all natural gas activity, the order permits fracturing of vertical wells, but bans the fracturing of horizontal wells until July 1.  He further ordered the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to complete its drafting of regulations regarding horizontal well hydraulic fracturing by June 1, and to accept public comment for no less than 30 days.

As we have explained in great detail before, here, most of the issues that concern New Yorkers involve water – fracturing requires a great deal of it, it must be treated before being released or reused, and there are those who claim that the fracturing process threatens drinking water sources.  Curiously, Patterson’s logic would suggest that the only issue is the volume of water used, as vertical wells pass through drinking water aquifers, thus imposing the same “threat” to drinking water, and they require the same process and the same minute quantities of lubricity improvers and “propants” to fracture the shale.  They require identical waste water treatment and disposal methods.  They just require smaller quantities than do wells that are turned horizontally and extended such before they are fractured.

So, what did Patterson accomplish other than to anger the environmental left while protecting some elements of an important economic engine in his state? 

He punted.

He bought himself some time.

He kicked the can down the street.

As noted, Patterson is leaving office soon, only to be replaced by a liberal Democrat, Andrew Cuomo, who offered no comment other than that all Executive Orders from the Patterson administration were subject to review.

So the battle over hydraulic fracturing will continue in New York.  While we’re skeptical of the objectivity with which the process will be studied there, we acknowledge and applaud that state’s right to conduct that study, for we would rather see the individual states affected by the opportunity make their own decisions than have them mandated by the federal government, where ideology outranks logic, economics or Constitutionality.

The American Wind Energy Association is warning that thousands of jobs will be lost if the government doesn’t extend its subsidies of the industry.  As ABC News reports,

The wind industry urged Congress on Tuesday to extend a cash grant program for production of renewable energy, claiming tens of thousands of jobs are at stake. 

The American Wind Energy Association wants the package to include renewal of the cash grant program for development in wind, solar and other renewable energy. The program, created by the federal stimulus law, is set to expire at the end of this month.

The wind group said that tens of thousands of Americans could lose their jobs or not get called back from layoffs unless the program is extended. It joined with trade groups representing the solar, geothermal, biomass and hydropower industries in a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday warning of a renewable energy slowdown.

At the same time, a wildlife advocacy group, the American Bird Conservancy, is asking lawmakers to limit those grants to those who will take action to protect birds from these Cuisinarts of the Air.

The wind energy industry not only requires government subsidies to survive, but it costs 2.2 jobs in other industries for every wind energy job it creates.  It’s time to stop this foolishness, restore domestic oil production, expand domestic natural gas production, and build nuclear generating plants.

There is a way that the government could greatly improve its ability to find a green jobs initiative.

Drill 

The US government received $23billion in revenue from energy resource production on government lands in 2008.  Last year, with reduced leasing and drilling activity, those revenues dropped to $10billion.

Energy production companies not only pay royalties to landowners, but they pay taxes as well.  As their lots improve, so does the lot of the nation.  By allowing domestic production to resume and grow, there would not only be an increase in direct tax and royalty payments to the government, but there would be job creation accompanied by rising personal income tax payments to the government, reduced government borrowing, reduced service on that debt, and reduced dependence on foreign sources.

The federal government makes more off a gallon of gasoline than do the oil companies.  So, support green energy, and drill, baby, drill!

The intent of the moratorium as stated by lawmakers is to provide state environmental authorities six months to study the experiences of other states where hydraulic fracturing has been employed, and to draft appropriate regulations.  One wonders what might be learned in six months that hasn’t been learned in the 60 years that the fracturing technology has been used.

As it turns out, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation has been studying hydraulic fracturing, and drafting regulations, for over three years and doesn’t expect to complete those regulations within the six month moratorium / grace period.  The imposition of this moratorium is nothing more than “feel good” legislation designed to appease the environmental left in New York State, with detrimental consequences such as

• Delays in the creation of production and support jobs in a state with over 900,000 unemployed workers
• Delays in direct revenues of about $1million annually to the state
• Significant financial harm to landowners.  A number of landowners in the state are obligated to leases to exploration companies that were signed years ago for $15 per acre.  Most of those leases are approaching maturity and would be renewed at significantly higher values, but this interference by the state government will allow the enactment of force majeure and the extension of the leases for up to a year.

The issues that New Yorkers are debating pertain primarily to water – protection of drinking water, acquisition of the large volumes of water the fracturing process requires, and treatment or disposal of that water after fracturing is complete.  Some of the issues are valid while some are not, and some are unique to Marcellus, and some, again, are not.

Drinking Water contamination is a hot topic in the fracturing debate despite decades of the process being used to recover oil and gas from shale formations with no such claims until recently,  in Dimock, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. Now we hear stories of flammable faucets attributed to natural gas seeping into water wells as a result of new drilling activity, yet residents of the area have witnessed that phenomenon long prior to the Marcellus activity, as evidenced by a comment to the post linked above –

Gasland is a joke. I live in Dimock. I have lived here for over 50 years. People need to educate themselves and not be sucked in by all of this negative media. Come here and see for yourself. Talk to the old folks who tell stories of lighting their wells on fire since the 30′s and 40′s. Go to Salt Springs Park where you can light the bubbling spring on fire. It’s always been an attraction. Get your facts straight!

Thus one wonders if the claims and lawsuits suddenly arising in northern Pennsylvania are factual, or opportunistic? 

Nonetheless, some of the concerns in New York may be sufficiently valid as to warrant further investigation.  Unlike other shale plays, and other areas of the Marcellus play, groundwater aquifers in parts of New York are about 200 feet deep, and the shale gas is only about 2,000 feet deep as opposed to 7,000 feet in other areas.  Disturbed geological formations, in these unique instances, bear further study to assure that the well bore is the only path for the gas to migrate upwards.  It might be reasonable to restrict drilling in certain areas, but it is unreasonable to outlaw fracturing throughout the entire Marcellus play.

Claims of substandard cement well casings have also been made and attributed to the “Gasland” phenomenon.  Less scrupulous production companies could indeed be guilty of applying inadequate standards to their operations, but this would only suggest that the regulatory authorities in Pennsylvania fall short of the standards applied by other state agencies across the country for the last sixty years!  Perhaps New York State needs to strengthen its regulations and enforcement so as to be up to the job, though as noted earlier, an additional six months won’t likely accomplish what three prior years have failed to achieve.

Process Water  The hydraulic fracturing process requires a substantial volume of water to fill and pressurize the well so as to fracture it and release the gas.  Water is not available in such abundance in New York, and alternative sources need to be identified.  Concerns about heavy traffic on substandard rural roads to allow that water to be brought in by truck, thus accelerating the wear of those roads, have also been expressed, though one can’t help but wonder that significant municipal revenues and other economic activity brought about by natural gas drilling could more than pay for a few road repairs.

Process Water Disposal is a third hot topic surrounding the fracturing process.  That substantial volume of water mentioned above must be removed from the well after the fracturing process is completed.  It contains chemicals (oh, horror!) which are added to the water to enhance its lubricity, along with potential brines, heavy metals, radionuclides and organics picked up from contact with the rock formations being fractured.  Certain of these constituents are outside the realm of conventional wastewater treatment technologies and warrant special attention.

Concerns about the temporary impoundment of these recovered waters on site until proper disposal is arranged have also been expressed.  Should these impoundment facilities be compromised, the water could seep into surface grounds and waters.  Yet this concern, as the well casing concern, is not insurmountable, but rather requires the cooperation of responsible drilling companies and capable state regulatory authorities, as has been successfully accomplished elsewhere for (forgive the redundancy) over sixty years.

Here at The Hayride, we have grown weary to the point of exasperation over this word “moratorium.”  New York’s moratorium on hydraulic fracturing is but another political ploy to appease the environmental left, allow Governor Patterson to leave office with a flourish, and allow the state to claim another “first.”  It does nothing in and of itself to resolve the issues raised by the people of New York, as only education of the populace and the application of sound technology can do that.

There is risk with any worthwhile venture, from drilling for natural gas to walking across the street to check the mail.  That risk can only be mitigated by responsible people and responsible companies applying sound technology, wisdom and caution to their endeavors.

Natural gas can restore our economy, serve as a clean energy bridge until new, fiscally sound technologies can be developed, and greatly reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy.  We can’t afford to leave it in the ground.

The four – Reps. Bill Cassidy, Steve Scalise, Charles Boustany and Rodney Alexander, signed on to a letter to EPA head Lisa Jackson demanding that higher standards for ozone levels be revisited before implementation. EPA is attempting, apparently by regulatory fiat and not through established procedure, to mandate that ozone “attainment levels” be improved across the country from the pre-2008 standard of .084 parts per million to somewhere between .060-.070 ppm. This, obviously, will cripple the state’s industrial sector.

The letter to Jackson, who is incidentally a native New Orleanian despite her agency’s seemingly relentless assault on Louisiana’s economy, reads as follows…

The Honorable Lisa Jackson
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Jackson:

We write to you today to express our concern regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) reconsideration of the 2008 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone.  This action departs from the normal five-year NAAQS review schedule established by the Clean Air Act.   We strongly support protecting the environment and ensuring the health of our constituents, but we have serious concerns that EPA’s departure from regular order in relation to an Ozone NAAQS review will have a significant negative impact on the economies of our states without enhancing air quality.  We are concerned proposals to lower the recently revised NAAQS will hurt working families and greatly increase operating costs for manufacturers during this time of serious economic difficulty.

As you know, the Clean Air Act requires that EPA conduct a detailed review of each NAAQS every five years.  This review, with extensive process, public input and comment, was last completed for the ozone standard in 2008.  Some groups argued for a significant tightening of the standard and others, including respected members of the scientific community, believed that the existing ozone standard was adequately protective.  In the end, EPA strengthened its existing 0.084 ppm standard to a much more stringent 0.075 ppm, declared that level adequately protective of human health and the environment, and commenced preparations for the next five year review. 

When EPA changed the ozone standard in 2008, many of our states were still coming into attainment of the old .084 ppm standard, and suffered significant economic and growth restrictions under the required state implementation plan (SIP).  States must again revise their SIPs to meet EPA’s more stringent 0.075 ppm standard, with even more adverse economic impacts.

This year, despite being midway through the ongoing five year NAAQS review process, EPA has proposed to bypass the transparency and technical input afforded by that statutory process and apply a more aggressive and costly ozone mandate.  Moreover, it does not appear that EPA is relying on any new scientific evidence in its decision, but is simply using the same data from 2008 to now reach a different conclusion.    

Areas that will not be able to meet EPA’s proposed new NAAQS will face increased costs to businesses, restrictions on development and expansion, and limits on transportation funding.  EPA’s new proposed standard could nearly triple the number of nonattainment areas and, under the high end of EPA’s own estimate, add $90 billion dollars per year to already high operating costs faced by  manufacturers, agriculture, and other sectors.  

In addition, recent studies indicate that each affected state could lose tens of thousands of jobs, if not more.  If our local businesses can’t compete, our constituents will lose their jobs, their health care and other employee benefits for their families.  Our communities will also lose local tax revenue critical to funding public education and municipal infrastructure. 

We believe that we can and should continue to improve our environment, but we are concerned that EPA’s action has real, detrimental impacts on the people they are trying to protect.  Given the heavy job loss potential this policy could result in and the absence of any new scientific data, we strongly believe changing the current NAAQS standard outside of the ongoing five year review process is unnecessary.

The Congressmen are following up to some degree on another letter, this one from the Baton Rouge Clean Air Coalition – a consortium of state regulatory agencies, business groups and academicians – which had objected to increased EPA mandates on ozone for several reasons. Among them…

• “We have reviewed EPA’s report and analysis of studies used to support revision of the ozone standard and find the health impact assessments very tenuous. … This information certainly doesn’t provide a strong, irrefutable basis for a decision with the potential impacts of a lower ozone standard.”
• “Louisiana’s ozone problems are minor and the imposition of the new lower ozone standards is unwarranted overreach by EPA”
• “…at the lower end of EPA’s proposed primary ozone standard, every monitoring site in the state would be designated nonattainment.”
• “Increased costs for utilities, fuel, food, consumer goods, etc. that will accompany the implementation of a new, lower ozone standard will likely reduce the standard of living for many and may force families with limited budgets to reduce spending for nutrition and health care.”
• “Each of the parishes designated nonattainment under the proposed standards will have their economic development activities seriously impaired by the stigma of ozone nonattainment. Industries in these parishes will see increased regulatory burdens, more costly emission controls, extensive monitoring and reporting, and more difficult permitting. Communities in these parishes can expect to be subject to auto emissions testing, possible transportation restrictions, and requirements that their transportation plans conform to state ozone attainment plans. Most of the potentially‐affected parishes do not have the financial and human resources to deal with the new federal regulatory burdens.”

The long and short of the new EPA rule will be another significant imposition of cost upon Louisiana’s economy at a time the state simply can’t afford a new rope around its neck. If you’re in a “non-attainment” area, which virtually each of the state’s markets will become should a new standard take effect, industrial permits will be impossible to get. That could wipe out efforts to lure Hawker Beechcraft to Baton Rouge or halt the planned construction of Nucor Steel’s facility in St. James Parish, not to mention any significant upgrades or expansions to refineries or petrochemical plants along the Mississippi.

But that’s not all. Because traffic is a generator of ozone, road projects in “non-attainment” areas will likely be halted. That’s lousy news for the future of Baton Rouge’s infrastructure, and it’s also likely a death knell for the completion of I-49 where it isn’t finished.

And the fact that the EPA’s rules on permitting will require the purchase of “offsets” for emissions merely impose Cap And Trade through regulatory fiat.

The good news here is that the EPA isn’t the only player in the game. In 2008, the Bush administration proposed pushing the .084 ppm standard to .075 ppm, but legal challenges kept that standard from being implemented. The same will likely happen now. And the GOP majority in the House beginning in January will have the ability to rein in the EPA through the power of the purse.

Still, there are those who are pleased with the EPA’s attempts to tighten the noose. The Louisiana Environmental Action Network, a group which has camped out in court on this issue in the past, hails the new standard of .060-.070 ppm.

“We will be thrilled if they get to that number,” said Mary Lee Orr, LEAN executive director. “The citizens will be so happy to have more protective standards for themselves. It’s taken a long time to get here.”

Whether the “citizens” will be happy with the loss of blue-collar jobs in Louisiana industry as a result of efforts to attain an imperceptible reduction in ozone is debatable. But another Usual Suspect in the emissions battle, Tulane’s Environmental Law Clinic, is crowing as well. Said Adam Babitch, a spokesman for the law clinic…

“It should mean cleaner air and fewer health care problems,” Babitch said. “The bottom line is that Baton Rouge has never been in compliance. We have made progress, but it’s a dollar late and day short.”

Baton Rouge, in fact, met EPA standards on ozone in September for the first time since the standards were enacted. Babitch is correct that if the EPA continues to move the goalposts the five-parish area around the Capitol City will remain in noncompliance. Compliance with the national unemployment rate, however, might be more attainable if the industrial sector is subjected to harsher regulation.

If anything, the global warmists are ramping up the rhetoric and the alarm. That seems to be the message this week in Cancun, where a little winter fun in the sun is being mixed with a conference on how to remedy something an increasing majority of people don’t believe is a problem.

The remedies now being discussed don’t exactly disprove accusations that global warming theory is nothing more than socialism in disguise.

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars.

Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods

He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.

This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.

“The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” he said.

Prof Anderson insisted that halting growth in the rich world does not necessarily mean a recession or a worse lifestyle, it just means making adjustments in everyday life such as using public transport and wearing a sweater rather than turning on the heating.

“I am not saying we have to go back to living in caves,” he said. “Our emissions were a lot less ten years ago and we got by ok then.”

The problem Professor Anderson and his ilk (like, for example, Bradley Schaefer at LSU) have is that developed countries generally function on democratic elections. Nobody will vote for zero economic growth in their home country. He also appears to have a problem with facts, as emissions in the developed world aren’t the problem anymore – the Chinese have admitted they’re the largest emitter of carbon on the planet, which is something that wasn’t the case before.

No one in Cancun seems to be suggesting China operate on a zero-growth philosophy.

On Monday, former Vice President, and would be President, Al Gore, admitted as much, as well as his role in furthering that endorsement for the sake of his political career.

The ethanol tax credit comes up for renewal on December 31.  It exists because Al Gore cast the deciding, tie breaking vote in its favor in a 1994 Senate vote.  At that time he defended his vote as a positive move to protect the environment in a manner that provided a sustainable, renewable energy source that was economically sound and good for the country.

“The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be,” he said back in 1998.

On Monday, speaking to a group of bankers in Greece, he admitted that he was only helping himself.

“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president,” the pastor of the Church of Climate Change, former vice president, and presidential candidate said.

Gore’s self-serving vote resulted in a tax credit for the agricultural lobby that has already cost taxpayers $16billion, with increasing costs ahead.  Recent EPA mandates call for increasing the ethanol content of gasoline from 10% to 15%, thus increasing the demand for this environmentally damaging product.  Refiners make a profit by blending ethanol into gasoline though without taxpayer subsidies, ethanol costs more than gasoline.

There are consequences, often unintended, to all decisions.  The ethanol tax credit motivated farmers to convert their crops to the strain of corn from which ethanol is made, and away from foodstuffs.  Forty-one percent of the corn grown today goes to ethanol, not to your plate.  Over fertilization results in a dead zone in the Gulf every year,  food prices have risen, and higher levels of unburned hydrocarbons are being released into the atmosphere.

And this all because Al Gore, a self-serving politician who received a Nobel Prize for his advocacy of responsible environmental stewardship (as he defined it), voted to continue this destructive tax credit.

Let us hope that those facing that same decision again this year will put the people who elected them, and in many cases the people who unelected them, before special interest legislation that would further harm the environment and the economy.