 |
 |
||
|
|
|||
 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
Friends of the Earth are Nobody’s Friends
This Mother of All Green Groups has devoted itself to finding every way possible to make our lives miserable, all in the name of protecting the environment. They are, of course, totally devoted to the Big Lie about Global Warming. In a recent news release (10/3/07) FOE said, "The science is unequivocal. Global climate change is real, occurring at an alarming rate with catastrophic consequences." Well, let’s understand something. The climate is always in a state of change. If, by "climate change" FOE means "global warming", a term they’re trying to use less these days because they know how discredited it has become, then the assertion that "catastrophic consequences" are due any day now demonstrates how the entire environmental movement is based on scare tactics and oblivious to the truth. The FOE news release told of "a coalition of environmental advocates (who) filed a petition today with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, asking the agency to set pollution rules for large, ocean-going marine vessels. These vessels include cargo and cruise ships." Now, if you want to push up the cost of every single thing that is transported by cargo ship, this is the way to do it. And, while they’re at it, they want to add more to the cost of that cruise you may be planning. FOE and its friends, Oceana and the Center for Biological Diversity, assert that, "Ships are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The global fleet of marine vessels releases along three percent of the world’s carbon dioxide, an amount comparable to the emissions of Canada." The fact that 95 percent of greenhouse gases consist of water vapor is conveniently ignored or that the oceans of the world trap and release carbon dioxide all the time is also overlooked. Every human on earth exhales about two pounds of carbon dioxide every day, but FOE does not want to deal with real science. If you are FOE, the only thing that matters is the lie and using the lie to drive up the cost of moving goods, raw materials, and people around the world. Their proposal benefits no one. FOE doesn’t care what kind of energy resource it attacks because these Green loonies are opposed to all forms with the exception of wind and solar power, two of the most inefficient and inadequate ways of providing energy anywhere other than isolated places like the Poles, deserts, or jungles. An example of this was another news release (10/4/07) that attacked nuclear power. For three decades FOE and other Greens have successfully thwarted efforts to introduce nuclear power more widely throughout the nation while loudly decrying the use of coal and other resources used to generate electrical power. "Many of you know why nuclear power isn’t an answer to global warming: in stark contrast to solutions like wind power and increased efficiency, nuclear power involves too much time, money and risk." As our nation’s leaders worry about events in the Middle East, from where easily a third of our oil is imported, Congress has begun to consider a loan guarantee proposal to encourage new nuclear plant construction. One might think this was a good thing insofar as nuclear fission does not produce any of that horrid "air pollution" attributed to other forms of energy production. FOE asked, "If we are really talking about meeting the challenge of global warming, nuclear power is about the slowest way to go about doing so. It takes at least 10 years for nuclear power plants to go from conception to operation. Wind turbines can go up in a year, and efficiency improvements can be realized almost immediately." This is utter nonsense. Wind power is the least efficient way to provide electrical energy and would involve having to cover an entire state with windmills to come even close to matching the output of a single nuclear power plant with a footprint of a few acres. Nor is it even remotely possible to achieve enough energy "efficiency improvements" to reduce or meet the needs of a nation with three hundred million people and growing. Lastly, need it be said that "meeting the challenge of global warming" is no challenge at all, given the fact that there is no catastrophic global warming? What people have to understand is that "enough" is never enough for the Greens. Until they have us all growing our own crops and raising chickens, cattle and sheep in the backyard, digging latrines instead of using flush toilets, using bicycles or horses for transportation, they will never been satisfied. Welcome to the Bad Old Days. Have you visited our daily blog yet? This is a new addition to our communications program. Remember, your donation is critical to our ability to fight the Vast Green Propaganda Machine. Thanks! You have to love a think tank that publishes "Don’t Increase Federal Gasoline Taxes—Abolish Them" as a Policy Analysis and, on the back cover tells you that "Nothing in Policy Analysis should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Cato Institute or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress." Some lawyer really earned his pay when he came up with that one!
Fortunately for me, there was an "Executive Summary" on page one that helped to identify the major themes. "Gasoline consumption does not necessarily distort American foreign policy, impose military commitments, or empower Islamic terrorists organizations," say the authors. In the process, of course, they are taking a large axe to some widely held beliefs. "State and federal gasoline taxes should be abolished." That’s the kind of thing that catches my attention. I was thinking about it the other day as I drove a short distance on New Jersey’s Route 280, a testament to potholes and the ruination of roadways imposed by a combination of Mother Nature and relentless commuters. As a lad in the 1960’s, I was the editor of a local weekly and recall watching the highway’s construction. Why, I wondered, wasn’t this detestable roadway being maintained properly? Then I remembered that I was, after all, in New Jersey! Spending money on highway repair is far less glamorous than creating more entitlement programs and borrowing into the next century to pay the pension demands of teachers and other civil servants. And, please, let’s do absolutely nothing about the illegal aliens among us. You just have to like people like Taylor and Van Doren who say things like, "In fact, we find no compelling reason for a federal gasoline tax at all and call for its repeal. Nor do we find any compelling case for state gasoline taxes." According to the American Petroleum Institute, "The nationwide average tax on gasoline is 45.8 cents per gallon as of March 2007, up 0.3 cents from October 2006…the federal tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon. The average state gasoline excise tax remained consistent at 18.2 cents per gallon." Other taxes such as sales, oil inspection, underground storage tank, and miscellaneous environmental fees add 9.15 cents per gallon to the average tax. Do the arithmetic. Taxes differ, however, from state to state. New York extracts 60.8 cents per gallon, while Arizona takes only 37.4. The authors of the analysis put forth some interesting and even provocative opinions (remember those footnotes that back up what they say). One of the common arguments for taxes is that the world is running out of oil, but they note this concern is based "on shaky ground…concerns that conventional crude oil is becoming scarce in any meaningful sense have not withstood close scrutiny." They go on to note that our frequently cited "dependency" on oil imported from "unstable countries" is the result of a conscious decision to continue this practice because it is, in fact, cheaper in many ways. To those politicians calling for higher taxes to force people to drive less, conserve energy, or switch to solar or wind power, "government solutions have the dubious distinction of being more expensive not just most of the time, but all of the time." Citing the price fixing in the 1970s when the government wanted to reduce import dependency, the authors note that, "Consumers were made worse off as a consequence." Anyone who remembers the long lines at gas stations can testify to that. Listening to George W. Bush say we are "addicted" to oil makes about as much sense as saying we are addicted to water. The Greens have, as long as my memory serves, hated gasoline as much as DDT. We know now that DDT is quite safe and, had it not been banned, would have cheaply and effectively saved the lives of the millions who have died from malaria. In the same way, we instinctively know that taxing gasoline "will not discourage highway congestion and reduce accidents on the roadway." And common sense tells us, "A national emissions tax would be inefficient because it would ignore the large geographic variation in damages associated with pollution." Bozeman, Montana, is not the same as Los Angeles. "Many foreign policy analysts think that U.S. oil imports are dependent on friendly relationships with oil-producing states. The fear is that unfriendly regimes might not sell us oil." Well, tell that to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose economy is dependent on selling oil and not influenced by whether they think George W. Bush is the Devil Incarnate. Moreover, "The fact that the Saudi Arabia and Kuwait paid for 55 percent of the cost of Operation Desert Storm suggests that keeping the Straits of Harmuz free of trouble is certainly within their means." To those who say we are in Iraq because of that nation’s oil, the memory of 9/11 has grown very dim indeed. We are also in Afghanistan, a nation famous for its heroin, not oil, production. Keeping one’s eye on the ball, i.e., terrorism fueled by Islamic fanaticism, is essential when all manner of spurious reasons are given to raise taxes on gasoline. "Once oil leaves the territory of a producer, market agents dictate where the oil goes, not agents of the producer, and anyone willing to pay the prevailing world crude oil price can have all he wants." What gasoline taxes do is "extract revenue" and this is what politicians live for. It has little to do with whether it makes any sense for Americans to be paying taxes on an energy source that is absolutely essential to our daily lives and the welfare of the national economy. If I thought the potholes on Route 280 would actually be fixed, I wouldn’t mind that much about the gasoline tax I pay every time I fill up the tank, but I stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy along about the time I concluded that government is a confiscatory enterprise with little concern for my well being. Tell a friend about "Warning Signs." Use our handy "Referral Blast" to do it!
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
||||||||||||||||||||
While most of us spend our time working to pay our energy bills and put foodon the table, Friends of the Earth (FOE) spend theirs doing everything in their capacity to insure that the nation and the world will not have sufficient energy to meet the needs of the human family. They may be friends of the earth, but they are no friends of those of us who live on it. 
Still, if one can make their way through the turgid prose of Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren, Cato senior fellows and both possessed of impressive credentials, the rewards are worth it. Policy Analysis number 598, dated August 7, 2007, is 16 pages of a tightly reasoned argument against raising the taxes on gasoline, plus 7 small-print pages of footnotes documenting everything but the name of the barber who cuts their hair. A prodigious amount of scholarly effort was invested in this analysis.