And to former vice president Al Gore, Senator Maria Cantwell, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, and many, many others. They have achieved, at least temporarily, what they have been working toward for decades.
Before I say why I am congratulating them, let me take a small detour into the past. (Trust me, this will make sense in a few paragraphs.) Remember the great controversy over cold fusion? Two scientists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, claimed that they had achieved fusion without high temperatures and elaborate magnetic bottles. If they were right — and very few scientists now think they were — we might have had a wonderful new source of cheap energy, with little pollution.
Not everyone thought that was a great prospect. In fact, a few extreme environmentalists openly said that they hoped that Fleischmann and Pons were wrong, that we did not have a wonderful new source of cheap, low pollution energy. (Even though it might displace other sources of energy that caused far more pollution.) For these extremists, providing more energy for people was wrong, in itself.
At the time, this seemed strange to me because of a well-known, but seldom-discussed, fact: The rise of human civilization was made possible by increasing use of energy. For instance, the rise of agriculture in the Middle East was enabled by the men who learned to hitch an ox, or a team of oxen, to a plow, and to supplement human energy with animal energy. And everyone — well, almost everyone — knows that the Industrial Revolution was based on steam, generated by burning coal.
This relationship between civilization and energy use is so strong that you can measure the advance of a society by measuring the amount of energy it uses, per capita.
FDR, for all his faults, understood this. That's why, for instance, he backed the REA.
(Total energy use isn't the whole story. It is also true that using energy more efficiently can help a society advance. One of the most famous examples is the invention of the horse collar, which made horses far more efficient in plowing.)
So when I saw these extremists oppose a potential source of cheap, clean power, I wondered what they had against civilization, and further advances in civilization. Reporters at the time did not share my curiosity, and so I never saw an answer to that question.
But it still interests me because their attitude — in a diluted form — has become more and more common. It is easy to find environmentalists who want us to sharply cut back our use of fossil fuels — even if that cutback means that almost everyone has less, even if we are forced to lower our level of civilization.
(There are a few extremists who explicitly call for humans to go back to the Stone Age, in order to live in a "sustainable" society. Sustainable until the next asteroid comes along, anyway. I haven't seen any polling data that would tell us how many share their views.)
Environmentalists are not always as frank about their desire to cut our energy use as they should be. Instead of saying, directly, that they want to cut energy use, they say that they want to switch to "renewable" fuels — and don't bother to mention that those fuels will be more expensive than the fuels we use now. (Or we would be using them already.)
But when pressed on the point, most environmentalists will admit that they want us to use less energy. And they understand that the simplest way to achieve that is to make energy more expensive. If you have bought gasoline recently, or looked at your electric bill, you can see how successful they have been (with more than a little help from OPEC) in raising energy prices. And that is why I congratulated the Sierra Club to start this post. They have wanted us to pay higher energy prices for many years — and we are, though not entirely in the way that they wanted.
(I included Tom Friedman in my brief list — which could have gone on for pages. I included him mostly because he has been frankly arguing for higher energy prices, specifically gas prices, for years, as he did in yesterday's column. It is true that Friedman, a wealthy urbanite who probably commutes by rail, mostly wants to raise the cost of energy for other people, mostly poorer people in rural areas. But he is frank enough to say that he wants higher energy prices directly, unlike many other environmentalists. I would be more impressed if frequent flier Friedman would argue for increasing the costs of air fares or for smaller houses in the Northeast, but one can't have everything.)
To make us pay higher energy prices, the Sierra Club had to have the unwitting and witting help of many politicians. Washington state's two senators provide an example in each category. For those not familiar with them, I can summarize them by saying that Senator Patty Murray is a nice lady who is not a rocket scientist, and that Senator Maria Cantwell is a not-so-nice lady who could be an assistant to a rocket scientist. (Do a search on "Patty Murray + rocket scientist" if you are wondering why I chose that example.) Given Senator Murray's intellectual abilities, I am willing to believe that she does not want higher energy prices. She just consistently votes for measures that will increase energy prices, without understanding the consequences of her votes.
Washington state's junior senator, Maria Cantwell, is smart enough to know that she is voting for higher energy prices. And she is also smart enough not to admit that, at least in public. But she owes her senate seat to environmentalists, in particular the Sierra Club, which ran a very expensive, and very nasty, campaign against her opponent in 2000, Slade Gorton. We can be reasonably certain that she wouldn't have won without that help, because she won by just 2,229 votes. (I have long thought that, were it possible to magically eliminate the illegal votes, she might have lost that election.) And she has more than paid them back since then, by working hard to make our energy more expensive.
(Incidentally, a real reporter should ask her some time whether she agrees with her supporters in the Sierra Club, whether she thinks that energy should be more expensive. Not that she would tell the truth, but her reply would still be interesting.)
Al Gore's example shows why Cantwell has been smart (if deceitful) to conceal her desire for higher energy prices. Though Gore had advocated higher energy prices through much of of his career, even a BTU tax in 1993, he found it necessary to claim — falsely — in 2000 that he was opposed to higher energy prices. The implausibility of that claim is one of the reasons he lost to George W. Bush.
Politicians imitate successful politicians. Cantwell, and many other politicians, most of them Democrats, have gotten away for years with claiming that they favor lower energy prices, while they work to raise energy prices, so we can expect to see more politicians using the same trick. While she, and others like her, are in power, expect your energy bills to continue to rise. And expect further advances in our civilization to be hobbled.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(If you want a succinct summary of how Cantwell and company raise our energy prices, check out Michael Ramirez's April 11th cartoon. And share it with your friends.)
Posted by Jim Miller at May 29, 2008 07:54 PM | Email ThisJust today there have been three articles castigating Congress for holding trillions, yes trillions, of barrels of oil out of production.
First there is Alex Epstein at ARI with an article 'Investigate Big Congress, Not Big Oil':
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=18691&news_iv_ctrl=1021
Next there is the Wall Street Journal with the article 'Blame Congress for High Oil Prices':
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121201723656327625.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
And finally there is MSM Money with the article 'Don't blame those 'greedy' oil companies':
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121201723656327625.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
When the American people begin to realize that they are paying $4 to $5 a gallon of gas because Congress will not allow exploitation of our vast oil deposits their wrath will know no end. Of course Cantwell et al will try to blame the oil companies for this fiasco but the oil execs have finally wised up and are refusing to be the fall guys. In the recent Congressional hearing they aptly turned the tables on their inquistors and properly laid the blame for high oil prices where it belongs: On Congress and the Senate.
This treachery by the Congress of putting the environmentalists before the interests of the American people will mean the end of any global warming legislation. For a Congressman to pontificate about the plight of the polar bear and why we shouldn't drill in ANWR will mean the prompt end of their career.
This is already happening in Britain where the Brown government is in disarray because the population is fed up with the imposition of draconian environmental regulations.
Posted by: Bill K. on May 29, 2008 10:45 PMThis perception is FAR from the truth. The modern Sierra Club is the front runner in a new class of public hostage based, high profit "non profits".
And their profits come right out of every citizen's pockets via lawsuits against the government.
The Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Acts are the weapons they hold to our heads.
The Sierra Club authored and sponsored laws which must be defended by the government, but by the language of those laws, they can not be complied with.
So they sue. And they win. And every penny of their own legal expenses are paid for by you and me.
And when they win their cases, they settle and collect once "public" lands into museum lands from which no royalties from timber or mining can be collected.
They say the value of the lands is highest as nature preserves for future generations.
They even demand that recreational access by road and trail be terminated to "protect" fragile wilderness from those future generations.
John Muir the creator of the Sierra Club is spinning in his grave.
But watch the next steps in their business plan.
Green Mining and Green Logging. As only your trusted steward the Sierra Club could manage.
A first stab was made locally a few years back when the Sierra Club's Wizard of Oz Charlie Raines and his puppet Gene Duvernoy of the Cascade Land Conservancy tried to buy the 100,00 acre Snoqualmie Tree Farm from Weyerhauser with public bonds, and then turn it into a Green Logging enterprise.
They failed, but they'll be back. All but one member of the King County Council favored the plan.
The Sierra Club home office in San Francisco is a small skyscraper with Friday afternoon martini parties. Who likes to hike with a hangover?
"Environmentalists", I guess.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on May 30, 2008 02:45 AMNevermind that Cantwell's company would not be possible without gold plated computer contacts.
Cantwell hired a school bus to take reporters and legislators up to the "PRISTINE" site of the proposed open cut mine. Television footage included sweeping views from the site.
OF CANADA!
The newspapers and TV reporters gushed over the untrammeled wilderness and showed a photo of the revered "Frog Pond" which would be lost should mining ever begin.
I've been there. It's not pristine. The "Frog Pond" is a cattle waller. The forest is lodgepole scrub laced with gypo logging roads. The trip in will remind you of the movie Deliverance. Shacks, abandoned cars and dumped washing machines adorn the roadsides.
I called Gorton's campaign office three times to beg them to rebut Cantwell's ads.
Gorton's staff knew better than to listen to a nut like me. Wonder what they're all doing these days.
The mine would have added 200 jobs to the second most depressed county in the State. But, screw it, we got a fabulous Senator out of the deal.
The mine is back as a proposed underground operation. Cantwell and Gregoire will take credit for the new prosperity in Okanogan County.
To preserve species and their habitates they discourage oil drilling, natural gas drilling, mining, agriculture, roads and most other aspects of human civilazation. I suspect that if we went back to just foraging for nuts and berries, they would complain that we were reducing the amount of forage available for the cute cuddlys.
Really other than donating all your worldly wealth to the Sierra Club so they can avoid doing productive work for a living, they do not seem to have much use for people at all.
Posted by: KW64 on May 30, 2008 06:44 AMAnd don't forget about Seattle City Light's lawsuit that stuck PSE customers (me) with higher energy bills.
Posted by: Palouse on May 30, 2008 07:50 AMNice piece. One of the better ones you've done.
Disgusting leftists, collectivists, socialists, etc. know exactly what they want. Create energy shortages, and strife for more reliance on the state. And they are the ones that want to be in control of the handouts when their backwards world comes in to focus.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 30, 2008 12:32 PMRemember; Environmentalists are like watermelons - green on the outside and red (as in hammer & sickle - comrades) on the inside. Collectivism and Marxism are at the root of this and the politicians are being willfully used by the environmental lobby.
Posted by: KS on May 30, 2008 10:20 PMRemember; Environmentalists are like watermelons - green on the outside and red (as in hammer & sickle - comrades) on the inside. Collectivism and Marxism are at the root of this and the politicians are being willfully used by the environmental lobby.
Posted by: KS on May 30, 2008 10:20 PMAdd to that the steadily and really rapidly increasing demand from the developing nations, particularly China and India, and what seems to be an inability of the large petroleum-producing nations (of whom we are not one, having used the majority of our supply decades ago) to increase supply beyond a very little, and the continuing violence and chaos arising from our misadventure in Iraq, and I think that we are facing high fuel prices from now into the foreseeable future.
That one is funny. Increasing supply does increase supply (pardon the tautology), but pouring our tiny remaining exploitable reserves into the vast pool of our current usage is an ineffective approach to the comprehensive changes we face.
"U.S. Energy Information Administration, an independent statistical agency within the Department of Energy, concluded that new oil from ANWR would lower the world price of oil by no more than $1.44 per barrel--and possibly have as little effect as 41 cents per barrel--and would have its largest impact nearly 20 years from now if Congress voted to open the refuge today."
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/05/23/arctic-drilling-wouldnt-cool-high-oil-prices.html
It would make almost no difference in prices, even if it might be desirable for some other reason. I am sure at some point we will end up pumping and devouring all of the rest of our domestic reserves, but don't fool yourself that it will make some major difference. It is a drop in the bucket.
Really, we should all be working together to figure out how to support a vigorous and complex human civilization without oil, because we will be forced to do without it no matter what any of us want.
Posted by: Daddy Love on May 31, 2008 08:57 AMBut there's much more going on here than good old greed or restrictive environmental regulations. Explaining the high price of gasoline at my local pump requires taking into account surging demand for oil in China and India, the falling value of the dollar, the impact of commodity price speculation by energy traders and a whole constellation of factors exerting steady downward pressure on supply. Those include the Iraq war, political instability in Nigeria and anti-American intransigence in Venezuela and Iran. There's also the ever-popular peak oil thesis: As the production of existing oil fields in Russia, Mexico, the North Sea and possibly Saudi Arabia inexorably declines, discovery and exploitation of new sources of oil are becoming steadily harder and more expensive."
It's all of these things and probably a few more. But the high prices are likely here to stay.
Posted by: Daddy Love on May 31, 2008 09:03 AMYour objections remind me of this cartoon by Ramirez:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/CartoonPopUp.aspx?id=294350339721450
Congress has closed not just ANWR but the Continental Shelves on both coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Colorado oil shale for decades and always we hear : "we can't drill our way to lower prices". Some how this evasion of responsibility is supposed to justify decades of inaction. The real reason Congress has not taken action to open the oil deposits is that they are more afraid of the environmentalists than their constituents and they have gotten away with it for decades until now.
However the laws of reality are not to be cheated. You cannot consume more than you produce. In what has been called the perfect storm of events, short supplies, increased demand and mountains of regulations are having their inevitable effect. But most, if not all, of these are man made impediments and not laws of nature and are thus subject to change. If supplies are short, do the logical thing and open Artic, the Continental Shelf, etc. Higher prices are already cutting back demand and the subsidies China and other countries have used to keep fuel prices artificially low are being phased out. As for the insane regulations that for example mandate "designer" gasoline blends the inhibit efficient distribution or the restrictions on where refineries can be built, they should be eliminated.
The Bakken Deposits that extend from North Dakota to Montana to Canada is estimated to be about 200 to 500 billion barrels of oil and the Brazil offshore oil finds indicate that new fields are being found all the time. To repeat, the problem with supply is not in nature but in man made obstructions. Remove these man made impediments and the price will fall. Maybe not to $2.00 a gallon but something more comfortable than $4 - $5 dollars a gallon.
Posted by: Bill K. on May 31, 2008 09:12 PMClinton blocked legislation that would have opened ANWR in the 90's. And the Democrats filibustered every attempt to open it in the 00's. When you restrict supplies, prices go up. Pretty simple concept. The enviro's and by extension Democrats have also blocked any new refineries in the last 30 years too.
Supply has simply not kept up with population growth in this country. Yes, China and India contribute to the problem, but that impact would not be as substantial today had supplies not been thwarted.
Posted by: Palouse on June 2, 2008 07:33 AM