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. …

[Editor note: Kent Hawkins has been at the forefront of devising a model (the Calculator) to estimate the lost wind-related emission reductions due to the fact that backup fossil-fuel generation (to firm wind) must operate less efficiently. This two-part series (today and tomorrow) provides Mr. Hawkins’ latest thinking. While technical, the Calculator is a very important line of analysis that will continue to be revised by its open-minded author. So critical comments are especially welcome.]

There is no convincing proof of the ability of utility-scale wind electricity generation to provide any of the incredible benefits claimed for it. In light of the massive costs (hundreds of $billions) of the extensive implementations projected by some governments, and equally large changes to electricity grids required to support wind’s ineffectiveness, it seems reasonable to expect that such claims be properly substantiated beforehand.…

Avian mortality is the scientific term applied in environmental assessments of windpower. But there is another term that has gained currency where industrial wind has impacted local bird activity.

This post documents the historical use of the term, which was coined by the Los Angeles representative of the Sierra Club in the late 1980s. The term came back into use when environmentalists challenged a project of Enron Wind Corporation, now a subsidiary of General Electric.

Looking back, if environmentalists and regulatory authorities had cracked down on industrial wind, this artificial government-dependent industry could have been avoided altogether or shut down.

Instead, with Big Environmentalism leading the way, and anti-energy intellectuals welcoming the high cost-low reliability of wind, this inferior power source has been allowed to grow.

And now, grass-roots environmentalists are leading the charge against industrial wind.…

On November 2, California voters defeated Proposition 23 by 61 to 39 percent, rejecting a suspension of of the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, otherwise known as Assembly Bill 32 (AB32).

California in general bucked a national trend on Election Day with all but one statewide office going to the Democrats. As of this writing, the Attorney General race has the Republican Steve Cooley slightly ahead in the vote count, but no official call has been made.

Pundits and politicians are making much about the Proposition 23 vote, but what does it really say? Equally important is the national message to be taken from the proposition’s defeat.

It is not what is being portrayed by the otherwise humbled Left environmentalists.

Mainstream Hype

Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, said the Prop 23 defeat sends “a big signal” to the rest of the country and the world that Californians stand firmly behind the law, which would cut greenhouse gas emissions in the state to 1990 levels by 2020.…