Dick and Jane Talk Wind Energy (a teachable moment: Part I)

By John Droz, Jr. -- December 8, 2010

[Editor note: Part II’s video on Jane talking about wind energy with her town supervisor is tomorrow.]

In my thirty plus years of working on environmental issues, I’ve learned a few things. One is that our “representatives” are often anything but. Another is that government bureaucrats have little interest in taking initiative, no matter how much sense it might make.

Yet another is that “environmental” organizations are much less interested in the environment then they might lead you to believe.

Yet still another insight is that active support from a sufficient number of citizens can be enough to offset these other liabilities. Put another way, if we do not get sufficient support from fellow citizens, our campaign objective has little chance for success. Phrased differently: the success of our campaign has more to do with the support we get, than the merits of what we are trying to do.…

A Republican Enigma on Renewables (Sen. LeMieux, please check your premises)

By Thomas Stacy II -- December 7, 2010

In line with conservative values, and with the passion of a local Tea Party leader, U.S. Senator LeMieux (R–FL) is behind his state’s lawsuit against the federal government’s healthcare reform law. He also has a national debt clock on his WEB SITE, and his headline platforms include reducing government waste and improving transparency and accountability from soup to nuts.

So can we feel assured this senator upholds these values across the board?

No, unfortunately, when it comes to the failed government experiment with politically correct renewable energy.

Senator LeMieux has co-sponsored a bill–along with 25 of his closest friends across the aisle–to extend the ARRA 1603 tax credits, doling out 30% of project costs up front to so-called “renewables.”

So what goes? Florida is not a big renewables state.…

Energy and Poverty – What is Really at Stake in Cancun

By Donald Hertzmark -- December 6, 2010

A year ago during the Copenhagen conference on climate change, I published a post, Electricity for the Poor–What Copenhagen Really Needs to Confront, where I noted that some 1.5 billion people did not have access to reliable electricity supplies. To update this, there is more electricity generated this year than last, mostly due to newly commissioned large conventional sources of electric power – gas, coal, hydro, nuclear. The new estimate is 1.4 billion living in energy squalor.

To hear the good and the great at Cancun, the sustainability issue of energy poverty is hidden. Occasionally, one of the climate-change grandees slips up and admits that this the real subject is wealth redistribution, not climate. But that is about as close as it gets.

All the more reason that the international forums on climate change, energy environment, and the like should get to first principles and study this map: The World At Night (courtesy of Bert Christensen)

When you fly overnight from Johannesburg to Europe the lights thin out just north of Lusaka, Zambia, a few more in Zambia’s Copper Belt and then nothing (and I mean nothing) until the North African coastline. …