South Carolina Endorses Green Socialism

Back in 2007, Gov. Mark Sanford created the South Carolina Climate, Energy & Commerce Advisory Committee (CECAC). Today, it was announced that CECAC had produced it’s final paper on the results. And they are scary…

First, what I didn’t notice until now is the composition of the group. Take a look through the list. Notice anything? There’s lots of academics, industry leaders and special interest groups represented. But not a single “common man”. Nobody is there representing the people of South Carolina. Which makes the recommendations not that surprising.

Here’s the final report in all of it’s glory. Covering 600+ pages, I doubt that anyone is going to take the time to read through all of it’s heft, including the myriad of policy suggestions that the group is making. Here, I’m going to focus on the “cross-cutting” issues, because those are the policy ideas that are the most disturbing to me, and to anyone who values freedom of ideas.

Mostly this is on the basis of “education”. This is the FIRST paragraph on their education section:

A well-articulated, meaningful, broadly implemented and sustained educational process is the means to achieve effective and durable actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Much of
the response to climate change requires a disciplined alteration in lifestyle that shares many things in common with a healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, people have to be motivated to attempt and succeed with basic changes in lifestyles. Individual responsibility, community action, conservation, and prevention are the principles upon which change of this magnitude is accomplished. It is no less than a shift in culture. The effort will benefit all aspects of society.

The educational process must define the basic aspects of climate change, including the evidence for cause-and-effect issues; it must specify the significance of climate change for the target audience and each individual; it must clarify and emphasize the role of the target audience and each of its members for a plan of action to mitigate and adapt to climate change; and it must relate the necessary changes in all aspects of people’s lives and their basic beliefs and values— e.g., health, environment, and economic viability.

Public education and outreach programs must build upon existing efforts and institutions, avoid unnecessary duplication, and promote best practices. The sustained success of policy actions recommended by the CECAC, as well as those that might evolve in the future, depends upon lifestyle changes resulting from education, experience, and practice. (All emphasis added)

This is a shocking amount of changing people that’s involved here. But that’s just the start of it. Here are some sections of the policy recommendations that should be, at the least worrisome for anyone who values academic freedom:

• Future generations—Integrate climate change and healthy lifestyle issues into educational
  curricula, post-secondary degree programs, and professional licensing. Emphasize the common basis and goals of response to climate change with protecting the environment and
  achieving optimum health for all people. Consider creating the South Carolina Health Corps, as outlined in Annex B of this document.

• What this means: Teachers will HAVE to follow the party line if they want to be certified as teacher. It will also mean that some climate change education may become required for graduation from HS or college, and this education will have an environmentalist bend to it. I’ll go into the Hitler Youth Health Corps further down.
• The coordinators for each of the target audiences should be credible with those audiences and have the ability to recruit and energize statewide networks of volunteers within each target audience. The state legislature should provide funding for the basic operations of the committee and the coordinators. Funding should be structured in such a way as to take maximum advantage of established mechanisms for education of each of the audiences.
• What this means: The idea is to get as many people “fired up” about climate change as possible. And it’s going to be paid for by your money, whether you like it or not.
• Level of Group Support: Unanimous
• What This Means: All of the people in the advisory panel approved of these measures. There was probably strong pressure to put out a united front (about 90% of these had unanimous approval). I don’t know how you get 20+ supposedly independent people together and get them to agree THIS MUCH on something as controversial as climate change/environmentalism. This goes to speak to the probability that the people put on the committee were selected more on ideological purity than representativeness.
• The state legislature should provide funding to support development and ongoing revision to the
  state Climate Change Adaptation Plan, including (but not limited to) funds to support the analyses needed to guide and inform the development and implementation of the plan and to cover expenses incurred by the Commission on Adaptation to Climate Change and its members.

• What This Means: A legislative blank check for the panel. Not surprising considering that this is coming from the group that would BENEFIT from the blank check.
• Add climate change to public education performance standards for science and social studies; identify gaps in climate change education and specific curricula to fill gaps. [From their notes] Someone has to be the initial teacher of the science of climate change. Integrate climate change and sustainability into core college curricula. (A more direct way of saying what I gleaned from above.)
• Introduce core competencies on climate change into professional licensing programs (energy efficiency in building design and construction, use of recycled materials, etc.).
• What This Means: Now even your plumber has to know the party line on climate change.
• Identify individual community leaders who are not yet acting on climate change, and make a special effort to educate and encourage them to act.
• What This Means: Target the politicians and those in the community who do not parrot the environmentalist/global alarmist policy. May include shaming or punishing those people.
• Develop and use a state-based “brand” on climate awareness and action.
• What This Means: You probably start seeing the Palmetto Tree/Crescent Moon tied into environmentalist agitprop. Possibly the same with “Carolina Girls: Greenest in the World”.

And that’s just ONE section. I’m going to go after the Hitler Green Youth in my next post, because it’s just that troublesome.

And these ideas are not just limited to South Carolina, as 30 other states have done something very similar. For example, compare the South Carolina website to the Montana website, or the Vermont website.

Look similar. I can only hope that South Carolina didn’t spend too much for the Center for Climate Strategy’s expertise. Because they’re pretty much copying the same exact template for every state. Which means that it’s pretty likely that Gov. Sanford got steamrolled on this one. Which is a shame, because Gov. Sanford is supposed to be a maverick Republican, who’s supposed to be a hawk on fiscal issues. I guess not here.

Liveblog of Pickens on Hannity Show II

4:08 PM: Sean announces T. Boone to be on in the next hour. Supposedly to talk oil prices and how oil is jeopardizing our national and economic security. $700 billion has to come up, even if the oil price isn’t anywhere NEAR what is needed for $700 billion.

6:20 PM: AARGH! Stupid WIS radio! I just realized that I’ve been listening to a looped version of the first hour! So that means no liveblog. But I’ll try to see if I can find a clip of the broadcast and analyze that. But because Hannity’s website sucks, I doubt I’ll be able to find this…

Bush Approves Transfer: America Adds $8 Billion in Debt

From the AP (via Forbes):

The bill transfers $8 billion from the Treasury’s general fund to shore up the financially teetering highway trust fund, which supports road and bridge projects around the country. In July, the White House threatened a veto, saying taking money from the general fund was “both a gimmick and a dangerous precedent that shifts costs from users to taxpayers at large.”

Supporters of the transfer argued that the Treasury was merely returning $8 billion it took from the then-prospering trust fund in 1998 for deficit reduction.

So basically, to cover “paying off the deficit” back in the 1990’s, lawmakers took money out of the highway trust fund (the checking account where all the gas tax revenues go). Which is funny because I thought the budget surplus was from income tax revenues, but I guess everything gets included in this. So now that the Schumer hits the fan (I swiped that from www.survivalblog.com, which I think is a great euphemism for the actual phrase, if not accurate), the money gets “loaned” back. Of course, this just means that whatever “debt reduction” is done is actually just been eliminated. Awesome accounting guys.

But this also means that the states get their precious highway money, construction companies’ political contributions and lobbying did not go in vain, and whatever useless highway projects that this money is being spent on can continue. At least until next year.

What I also found interesting is that one proposal floated by the Bush administration was to reduce the MASS TRANSIT portion of the trust fund. Motorists, you’ll be happy to know that your gas taxes are going toward those empty regional transit buses you’re stuck behind on the road. Of course, the Democrats wanted nothing to do with that, being that they love mass transit, even if it is cross-subsidized by motorists.

And the same thing has already happened with Social Security. The government has been using the money in the SS trust fund to pay for the usual stuff. So in about 2020, when the trust fund starts to run out, the government will just “get the money back” from the Treasury, since it was already “loaned out”. So don’t worry, Social Security WILL BE SAVED. You’ll just end up paying 50-80% income taxes to do it.

Government: The largest legal Ponzi scheme ever created.

How much land would be needed for the Pickens Plan to work?

But let’s give the benefit of the doubt to Pickens and say that wind could make up the difference. How many windmills and land would be needed for it to work?

From the graph in my previous post, we have a power deficit of 300,000,000,000,000,000 British Thermal Units. This converted to kilowatt hours is 87 921 325 000 000 kWh. You need to get capacity to figure out how much space is needed, which is in units of kilowatts so you divide by the number of hours in a year, specifically 8420. That means you need to have 10441962589 kW of capacity to get this much power in a year.

But wind turbines don’t run 24 hours a day, in fact, they only run about 33 to 50% of the time, so you actually need double the capacity, AT BEST, to get the capacity needed. So you really need 20883925178 kW to supply the power importation needs for the US.

How much land would this require? For that I went here and used their calculator. The end results:

To get the US off foreign energy, we would need 41,767,850 turbines, which would cover 10,441,962.5 acres. This is also 16316 square miles. Or nearly the size of Vermont and New Hampshire COMBINED. And this is just for the physical items of turbines themselves.

Using a different method, a rule of thumb is that one square kilometer can support 10 to 15 MW of capacity. So using the figure above, we’d get 20883925 MW. So dividing by the best case scenario of 15 MW per square km, we get 1392262 sq. km or 537555 square miles. This is approximately the size of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and half of South Dakota, including urban areas, highways, mountains, and water.

So when T. Boone says that the Great Plains is the Saudi Arabia of wind, you better believe it because if we’re going to use wind to get the US energy independent, the Great Plains will become one giant wind farm.

And this is under a BEST case scenario. Just for fun, lets use the lower end of the power estimates (under the cut):

How Much Does the Government Spend on Energy Subsidies?

Thanks to the Energy Information Agency, I get little email every once and a while alerting me to when they have produced something called “Energy in Brief.” So this week, I got one in the email called:

“How much does the Government spend on energy-specific subsidies and support?”

Jackpot.

And the answer to this question: $16.6 billion just in the past year. To put that in pork perspective, that’s 45 to 60 Bridges to Nowhere, depending on which figure you use (total price of bridge to nowhere or just the famous 2005 earmark). That’s right, we can connect 45 to 60 small towns with their airports for just how much the government gives out for energy.

And what does the government do with this money? Not much, by the EIA’s own accounting:

Have Subsidies Affected Prices or Production?

Between 1999 and 2007, the average real price of total energy per British thermal unit (Btu)3 consumed increased more than 80%. Meanwhile, total energy consumption or demand, including imports, grew by about 5%. Most subsidies and support to energy producers should stimulate supply; so too should higher prices and rising energy demand. Yet in 2007, the United States supplied roughly 72 quadrillion Btu from domestic resources, about the same amount as in 1999. This leaves the impression that energy subsidies had little effect on net domestic production other than to help prevent further declines. But the enactment of various production-oriented tax incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and subsequent legislation may have contributed to the slight increase in primary energy production over the last two years.

So as a result of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives, the US might have had a slight increase in energy production. At least with the 45 to 60 Bridges to Nowhere, we would have ACTUAL BRIDGES, not possible things that people would be hard pressed to identify.

You’d think that because of T. Boone Pickens’ ad campaigns that we don’t do anything to support wind energy right now. And, like most things T. Boone Pickens says, this is pretty wrong. Again from the EIA:

Did You Know?
The estimated value of production tax credits to wind producers in FY 2007 was $666 million. The benefit was distributed over an estimated 27.7 million megawatthours, making wind power the largest beneficiary of production tax credits among all renewable technologies.

And this doesn’t even include other incentives given to wind producers that AREN’T tax credits, like direct subsidies. And this doesn’t even take into consideration that wind power DOESN’T produce much energy. So the per unit cost is an astronomical $.02/per kilowatt-hour. Considering that your energy bill is anywhere from $.08 to $.20 / kWh per unit, wind gets a subsidy that’s equal to 10 to 25% of your per unit costs. That sounds like it’s doing a whale of a job.

But believe it or not, wind ISN’T even the worse offender when it comes to government largess. That would be “clean coal”, which gets $2 billion to produce a tiny fraction of the energy in the US. But once again, clean coal and coal-to-liquids have huge backers in the Senate in the form of Robert Byrd and Mitch McConnell. And that’s money that’s not doing a lick of good.

So before we start heaping MORE money on renewables, a la the Pickens Plan, we should look to see what works and what doesn’t. Right now, wind and solar aren’t.

McCain Invents New Constitutional Power

Again, from John McCain’s acceptance speech:

We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington.

I must’ve missed that part of the Constitution where it says that the government sets the standards for transportation fuel. Yes, yes, I know I’m in a minority opinion, where the Supreme Court has given the federal government carte blanche to do whatever it wants with the economy. Of course, no one has opposed the ethanol mandates, or the EPA gasoline/diesel requirements yet either, at least not successfully. Of course, as a nation, we have long accepted federal limits on economic freedom. Perhaps when you’re required to trade in your gasoline powered car for a T. Boone special, you might make a peep, or not.

Regardless, this is just another way that McCain is letting everyone know that he’s going to be fulfilling the Pickens Plan when he gets into office. He just doesn’t want to say it so directly. So much for that openness and accountability that he’s running on.

Sanford issues oxymoron

Sanford issues voluntary evacuation order – Local – Myrtle Beach Sun News.

What’s a voluntary order?  This is one of the more amusing things I’ve heard about the storm that really isn’t, but the media really, REALLY wants it to be.  They’re hoping that it’ll get back to hurricane force winds, though the prognosis isn’t very good for that to happen, especially considering that Hanna continues to weaken.

And as he was announcing the order, even the Governor had to reiterate that it was voluntary.  So why give the order in the first place?  How about issuing an advisary?  Or a suggestion?  But it has to be an order to make it sound important, even if it doesn’t have any meat to it and most people are going to ignore it anyway.

And the best part:

Gov. Mark Sanford just told beachside South Carolinians in Horry and Georgetown counties that if they feel more comfortable getting out of the wind and rain forecast for the next 36 hours, they can begin to evacuate.

So South Carolinians needed to be told by the governor that it’s ok for them to evacuate.  Thank God he said this, because people might have been forced to STAY if they weren’t comfortable with being in the storms path.  Yeeesh.  Have we become so dependent on the state that we can no longer take our safety into our own hands?

The answer is:  of course not.

So far, we have the Governor issuing the voluntary order, the local schools closing up shop for the day as well as the local university, and yet everyone I talked to today was pretty much unfazed with this storm.  As usual, it’s a matter of the tail wagging the dog, as the media is trying to make something out of this.  And as a result, it’s forcing the government to make sure it doesn’t look bad with the media.  In fact, it’s IKE that the people I talked to today are more worried about than Hanna, but that would require long term planning, something the drive-bys are uninterested in doing.

Meanwhile, while the local government employees will get their day off, I’ll be making the drive to the beach, like I do everyday.  Except they have me going from SOUTH to NORTH, instead of NORTH to SOUTH like I normally do.  Which makes no sense, but the bureaucratic dictates of someone two hundred miles away and has probably never done the drive before must be obeyed.  So I have to do something useless and more likely to be problematic, just because someone thinks they have a better idea of how to do my job than the person who has done the job for the past year.  Just like pretty much every bureaucracy.
And I’m sure they also didn’t think that this would force me into the major evacuation route instead of driving against it.  But they wouldn’t think about important details like that.  So I’ll probably be stuck in traffic on US 501 or US 378 tomorrow, all because some genius in middle management came up with a great idea.

National Party Platforms on Transportation and Energy – Green Party

I have to give credit where credit is due: the Green Party is very, very open about what they want to do. Sure it’ll involve massive government intervention in everyone’s daily life, but they’re putting it out there in very specific terms.

The entire platform (including changes from 2004 to 2008) on energy and transportation policy, which they call “Ecological Sustainability” is available from the GP website. Unlike the Libertarian Party, the Greens are very specific about what they would like to do.

So lets see what they have on energy:

• “Our oil and gas addiction in particular has led to wars and human rights abuses in many countries….U.S. dependence on oil and gas has driven an unparalleled assault on the global environment and on human rights in many nations.” Of course, if we were to not use oil or natural gas anymore, these third world countries would be liberal democracies with no disputes or conflict whatsoever. This, of course, confuses the fact that the countries themselves start these wars. There are plenty of countries that have petroleum resources that don’t abuse their citizens (e.g. Canada), and there are countries that DON’T have oil resources and DO abuse their citizens (e.g. Zimbabwe). Removing the oil would not remove the source of these problems (the backwards societies and the lack of governing structure)
• “We oppose energy utility deregulation…. We recognize that deregulation and its reliance on markets – as opposed to state-based regulations – is incapable of providing affordable, reliable and clean energy…. We support state efforts to regain control over electricity by establishing democratic, public control systems to locally coordinate supply and demand and by eliminating energy trading.” It’s funny how people have no idea how economics (and socialism) work. PUCs are NOT democratic by any stretch of the imagination, and the current market system somehow does enable people to have affordable and reliable energy, and if you’re in a fully deregulated market like Texas, you can have clean energy too. If you’re in California or most other states, you have no choice in where you get your electricity and it’s “cleanliness”. But the Greens see markets as bad, no matter if they actually enable clean energy or not.
• “New construction should be required to achieve substantial portions of its heating energy from the sun.” Man, I’d hate to live in the Pacific Northwest under the Greens.
• “We oppose further oil and gas drilling or exploration – especially that which would occur in other countries, (emphasis mine)” I’d LOVE to see how they’d enforce banning oil exploration in other countries. This further enforces the general criticism of the enviros as wanting to keep the poor countries poor.
• “We call for independent, public-access radiation monitoring at all nuclear facilities.” If you want to do this, do this. Go to your nearest nuclear power plant, set up shop with a Geiger counter, and report your results. I’m not going to stop you and if the government does, then THAT’s your problem. But you don’t need the government to do this for you.

And their section on transportation:

• “We call for major public investment in mass transportation, so that such systems are cheap or free to the public and are safe, accessible, and easily understandable to first-time users. ” hahaha Short of spending TRILLIONS on mass transit, you’re never going to get all three… and since we’re talking about the government running this system, you’re NEVER going to get anything that’s easily understandable. No matter how much you spend.
• “The present-day approach of upgrading streets to accommodate increased traffic generates new traffic because access is now easier, and people will now take jobs further from their homes or purchase homes further from their jobs. Some people shift from public transit to private cars due to the trip time in cars being shorter. As patronage for public transit decreases, public transit loses funding, becomes less viable, and service deteriorates thus encouraging even more people to use their cars. ” This is the best part, the Greens admit that people don’t like taking transit, admit that private transport is faster, and that public transit wouldn’t work without massive subsidies. So, their solution is to make people do something they would prefer not to do in the first place. A winning political strategy.
• “Redirect resources that currently go to enhancing auto capacity into expanding human-scale transit options….Develop affordable mass transit systems that are more economical to use than private vehicles. ” What the hell is a human-scale transit option? And I’d love to see the day when a public mass transit system is more economical to use than a private system. That’s also the day communism will finally work. And pigs will fly.
• “Emphasize the use of light and heavy rail for freight transportation. ” WHY? It’s slower, it has a lot more delays and is constrained in where and how it can go. An airplane or truck can bypass congestion. A train can’t. Just ask anyone who’s taken Amtrak. Speaking of which…
• “Expand our country’s network of rail lines, including high-speed regional passenger service.” Because outside of the Northeast, there is not a single place that is built in a similar way to that region. So you’d be trying to shoehorn a system that works (barely) in one region, where it’s not needed elsewhere. And as most people who take Amtrak can attest to, Amtrak is beset by delays and general incompetence.
• “Ban flights between cities where land-based travel options can get a passenger to their destination within four hours.” Since you have the Acela, all of the Northeast just lost their air service… sorry. Not to mention the whole hub-and-spoke system for the airline industry. So for example, I live in Columbia, SC. Since nobody in their right minds wants to travel to Columbia, there are not many direct flights, so you have to have connections in many cities. Thus, you have alot of flights from Columbia to Atlanta (4 hours away) and Charlotte (1 hour away). Congrats, you no longer can fly that route. So this will either:
  1. Force people to drive up to 4 hours to get to the airport
  2. Force airlines to have you connect from somewhere MORE THAN 4 hours away.

  Either way, you’ve just made the whole air travel system ALOT more complicated and wasteful. But environmentalists are pretty ignorant when it comes to the law of unintended consequences. And to put a cherry on top of their economic backwardness…

• “We encourage the social ownership and use of land at the community, local, and regional level.” The Greens have never studied or heard about the Tragedy of the Commons.

So overall, the Greens have set out an expansive list of things they want to do, which is ballsier than most political parties. Of course, given that most of what they want to do would be economically wasteful at best, it’s not a very smart plan either.

Response to a Barrett Comment

From the comments on the Gresham Barrett Brings the Stupid post:

Right on, Mike! I’m with you all the way. Next time I’d like to hear you thoughts on Jane B Dyer the Democratic Party’s candidate for Barrett’s job.
She is the kind of candidate SC needs but the media seem to be conspiring to keep her candidacy quiet. She’s been an Air Force flier, She is now a FEDEX captain on one of those big freighters besides being a Mom and a Grandmother. She lives in Easley and she needs the help of guys like you.
Bill

Well, lest anyone think that I’m partisan in my distrust of politicians (unlike most of the media out there), here’s my thoughts on Ms. Dyer:

Sorry Bill, but it looks like Barrett doesn’t have any kind of competition in this race. Ms. Dyer is parroting the same rhetoric that has become standard for all politicians. But I think she’d get the T. Boone Pickens seal of approval.

Below is a more detailed look at Ms. Dyer and her environmental energy policy.

Gresham Barrett Brings the Stupid

Here in Columbia SC, we’re doomed to have at least one talk radio host who’s a complete moron, Kevan Cohen. He’s the definition of a neo-conservative, and makes my ears bleed if I listen to him for more than 15 minutes at a time. You can’t go five minutes without him making some pro-military or pro-war comment, but on every other topic, he’s about as spineless as they come.

So that’s why I didn’t hear him and Congressman Gresham Barrett talk about energy until the end of their conversation. Hannity wasn’t doing it for me today, so I switched to the other station. I only caught the end of the conversation, but this is where Mr. Barrett brought it. And by it, I mean his completely stupid idea.

Make SOUTH CAROLINA energy independent.

There’s enough problems with making the US energy independent. Like the fact that our electric grid is connected to both Canada and Mexico. But it’s at least possible given the resources of the entire country.

South Carolina, on the other hand, doesn’t have the resources to independent from anyone on energy. We don’t have coal beds, we don’t have natural gas production areas, we don’t have uranium mines. And most importantly, we don’t have the ability to use solar, wind or geothermal energy:

So in order for South Carolina to be energy independent, we’d have to completely rely on the state’s hydroelectric dam system. Needless to say, this isn’t a very smart way to encourage economic development, or keep the lights on in South Carolina.

So what does energy independence for South Carolina look like for Mr. Barrett? Pork. Lots and Lots of Pork.

Pork for nuclear.
Pork for biofuels.
Pork for hydrogen.
Pork for universities.
Pork for everyone.

He will basically be hiding a pork bill under the guise of making South Carolina the “leader in energy.” But he has to return the investment that his sponsors have made in him. His top sponsor, Washington Group International runs the Savannah River Site, which handles, you guessed it, the Department of Energy’s nuclear research. He also has received money from South Carolina’s investor-owned and electric cooperatives who have a heavy stake in all of the nuclear reactors found in the state. So any pork toward nuclear, which he’s pushing heavily, goes towards his financial benefactors. Big surprise there.

Finally, he came up with this bit of genius. He mentioned in passing that by building nuclear reactors, they can serve as desalinization plants as well. Uh, yeah. There’s just a little question of… where are you going to put this nuclear desalinization plant? Myrtle Beach? No, they can’t even handle motorcycles, nevermind a nuclear reactor? Charleston? Perhaps. But do you remember a little thing called Hugo, Mr. Barrett?

The point is that “energy independence” has become a phrase that has lost all meaning. Much like “going green,” this is a phrase that means whatever the person using it wants it to mean.