The clear and present danger of envirnomentalism

[_Droopy]

And the real historic cause of our present energy crisis:



Georgia Gets Green 'Justice'

By Steven Milloy
Fox News | 7/7/2008

Vicki Lawrence’s 1972 hit "The night the lights went out in Georgia" may become the official state song thanks to what passes for justice in the court of Fulton County, Ga., Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore.

Acting on a petition from the Sierra Club and the Friends of the Chattahoochee, Moore invalidated a permit issued by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division allowing Longleaf Energy Associates to build a 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Early County.

The key issue in the case is the emission of carbon dioxide from the proposed plant. The permit granted to the plant did not limit CO2 emissions from the plant for the simple reason that the federal Clean Air Act does not include CO2 as an "air pollutant" to be regulated.

While Moore observed that the permit could be upheld if CO2 was not an "air pollutant" subject to the Clean Air Act, she concluded that the Supreme Court had already decided the matter to the contrary in its 2007 decision Massachusetts v. EPA.

"Faced with the ruling in Massachusetts that CO2 is an 'air pollutant' under the Act, [Longleaf] is forced to argue that CO2 is still not a 'pollutant subject to regulation under the Act.' [Longleaf’s] position is untenable," Moore wrote.

If anything is untenable, however, it is Moore’s misreading of the Supreme Court’s decision. The court did not, in fact, rule that CO2 was an air pollutant that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The court wrote that, "we hold that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of [greenhouse] gases from new motor vehicles."

So the court only ruled that the EPA may regulate CO2, not that CO2 is an "air pollutant" for purposes of the Clean Air Act. Although the 5-4, Justice John Paul Stevens-penned decision bloviated a great deal about carbon dioxide's causing global warming, in legal parlance this is known as "dicta," a sort of judicial editorializing.

The court’s decision and legal significance was strictly limited to the majority’s disapproval of the EPA’s process for declining to regulate CO2.

"In short, EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change. Its action was therefore ‘arbitrary, capricious … otherwise not in accordance with the law. … We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand the EPA must make an endangerment funding. … We only hold that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute," the court concluded.

Moore, unfortunately, based her decision on the court’s non-legally binding musings about CO2 rather than the court’s actual ruling. Building on her gross misapplication of the law, Moore went on to essentially impose an impossible-to-meet technology standard on the proposed plant.

In contrast to the traditional method of burning coal to generate steam that drives an electricity-producing turbine, the technology called "integrated gasification combined cycle" converts coal to a gas that is burned to drive the turbines.

IGCC is used by only a few power plants around the world on essentially a demonstration project basis with good reason since an IGCC plant costs nearly three times as much as a conventional coal plant.

The alleged "advantage" of IGCC, if it can be so labeled, is that it reduces CO2 emissions. Because the Clean Air Act requires that air pollutants be regulated by "best available [pollution] control technology," or BACT, the Sierra Club and Friends of the Chattahoochee persuaded Moore that any permit for the Longleaf plant must be based on emissions limits that could be achieved by IGCC despite that the technology is not really commercially available.

But even if IGCC were commercially available, it’s not at all clear that it would be considered BACT since one of the factors in determining whether a technology is BACT is cost. While IGCC may reduce power plant CO2 emissions, it would substantially increase the emissions of dollars from consumer and taxpayer pockets.

Moore made no effort to do a cost-benefit analysis to see whether IGCC might qualify as BACT. While it may have seemed like a no-brainer to Moore to side with the local green elites against the out-of-state power company that applied for the permit, she actually wound up siding against the working people and economy of her own state.

For no good reason, Moore denied Georgia the many well-paying jobs associated with the $2 billion plant construction and permanent plant operations. There’s also the not-so-small matter of the much-needed energy the plant would have produced.

Watch for this sort of green justice to come your way. A lawyer for the activist group Environmental Defense told The New York Times she hopes other courts would pick up on Moore’s "reasoning."
Let’s hope, instead, that the next Judge Moore can be persuaded to apply the actual law to real-life facts rather than to impose fantasy emissions limits that can only be met by not-ready-for-prime-time technology.

[_Droopy]

This comes at a time of record high gasoline, natural gas, and electricity prices, in a country that has not built a single coal fired, natural gas fired, or or nuclear power generation plant in upwards of thirty years, and which refuses to drill for oil on the vast majority of its own resource rich lands.

If we do not change course, and change course very soon, we will indeed be reaping the whirlwind of the consequences of the ideology of environmentalism, an ideological and political indulgence only affordable to rich, decadent, effete civilizations like our own who have conquered the problems of living, and living well, and who now have the option of substituting deep and sophisticated navel gazing for serious thought and serious religion.

[_Angus McAwesome]

This comes at a time of record high gasoline, natural gas, and electricity prices, in a country that has not built a single coal fired, natural gas fired, or or nuclear power generation plant in upwards of thirty years, and which refuses to drill for oil on the vast majority of its own resource rich lands.

The US is moving towards a ban on Coil plants, Droopy. However, since 2005 there have been upwards of ten applications for new nuclear reactors and entire nuclear power stations approved by the US NRC (TVA's putting two new 1117mw reactors here in Alabama). Nuclear is far cleaner than coal, not only in air pollutants, but suprisingly enough, the waste from a nuclear reactor is actually LESS radioactive then the fly ash that comes out of a coal furnace.

Maybe GA should look into nuclear power instead of obsolete and environmentally unsound generation methods like coal.

Edit: Also, you're wrong about the "no power plants built in the last thirty years" claim. The TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Power Station's Unit One finished construction and came online in 1996 and Unit two is schedualed to come online by 2013.

If we do not change course, and change course very soon, we will indeed be reaping the whirlwind of the consequences of the ideology of environmentalism, an ideological and political indulgence only affordable to rich, decadent, effete civilizations like our own who have conquered the problems of living, and living well, and who now have the option of substituting deep and sophisticated navel gazing for serious thought and serious religion.

Half right and half wrong. While we do need to build more generating stations and build them quickly, we have to be very conscious of the long term effects of whatever generating methods we utilize. You also have to understand that the biggest impediment to new generating stations isn't the evironmentalists so much as it is the NIMBYs.

[_Droopy]

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/ener ... ld-fi.html

The TVA Watts plant began construction in 1973. Depending upon your understanding of the term "new", this means that this plant is actually 25 years old, if you count the entire course of its lifetime. It only began actually functioning in 1996. Construction took that long. No new nuclear facilities have been undertaken since the late seventies.

The NIMBY attitude itself is a cultural outgrowth of the environmental movement's long campaigns of scare hysteria regarding virtually all forms of energy generation, but also involves a long standing plea from the point of view of a romantic aesthetic perspective, in which virtually every human structure or modification of "pristine" wilderness, scenery, or landscape, (at least so long as it has anything to do with industry or economic growth) is understood as the aesthetic destruction of nature.

Contrary to your assertion, and although the NIMBY attitude can be a factor, the primary obstacle to the creation of new energy generation capacity, including oil drilling, is not NIMBY but the technophobic and chemicaphobic hysteria long used by the environmental movement and lobby to fuel and exacerbate that attitude, combined with the actual weapons themselves, which are legal and economic in nature. These are primarily the endless, open ended environmental impact statement, the ESA, and the wetlands laws.

[_Angus McAwesome]

The TVA Watts plant began construction in 1973. Depending upon your understanding of the term "new", this means that this plant is actually 25 years old. Construction took that long.

What does length of construction have to do with anything? You claimed that no plants have been build for thirty years, yet here is a power plant that finished construction and started generating electricity 12 years ago.

chemicaphobic.

Not sure what "chemicaphobia' is. Chemophobia, on the other hand, is the fear of chemicals and chemistry.

Just saying.

These are primarily the endless, open ended environmental impact statement, the ESA, and the wetlands laws.

Because safe guarding our environment is a bad thing how? If we can sustain our society AND sustain our environment at the same time I fail to see what, if any, problem there could be with that.


Also, I'm wondering why you attribute the Judge's decision to her being a "liberal" when all she did was her job, which is to review and impartially judge a case based on relevant statutes and case law?

[_Droopy]

What does length of construction have to do with anything? You claimed that no plants have been build for thirty years, yet here is a power plant that finished construction and started generating electricity 12 years ago.

OK well, no need to play conceptual or semantic games. Try this: no new nuclear power plants have been licensed or orderd in thirty years. The one you mention was initiated when I was in Junior High School.

Not sure what "chemicaphobia' is. Chemophobia, on the other hand, is the fear of chemicals and chemistry.

Fine. That was my own neologism.

Because safe guarding our environment is a bad thing how? If we can sustain our society AND sustain our environment at the same time I fail to see what, if any, problem there could be with that.

And here we come to the great big fat Greek dissociation in concept and world view that sets conservatism/libertarianism off from the Left. There is nothing wrong with safeguarding the environment, nothing whatever, but the ESA and the wetlands laws have very, very little, in any reasonable scientific sense, with achieving that end, and everything to do with the gradual erosion and eventual effective destruction of property rights and the imposing of severe restrictions on development and economic growth. This is how they have been used, overwhelmingly, since their inception (the continual burning down of our national forests Angus, has as much or more to do with the ESA and its irrational restrictions on proper forest management and logging practices as does lightning).

The Spotted Owl scam in the nineties, grounded in palpable junk science and romantic environmentalist eco-religious concepts of "pristine" nature in danger of despoliation, cost thousands of logging and related jobs in Oregon and Washington and created huge social costs in its wake (including divorce, substance abuse, and emotional devastation) of the kind that can be imagined to follow the wholesale destruction of one's livelihood.

The main legal precedent? The Endangered Species Act.

http://www.law.buffalo.edu/homepage/eem ... tedowl.htm

What's interesting is to watch the environmental movement cannibalize itself and its own values, as in the Klammath Valley fiasco, based in the same concerns and mediated by the rogue department of Fish, Game, and Wildlife (that is frequently involved in many of the most egregious constitutional abuses)...But that's another story.

[_asbestosman]

Last I checked, drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge would barely provide enough oil for 1 year if that were our only source. It'll probably take 100 years to get it all so it'll give us 1% per year for a while until you take into account our exponential increase in demand over that time. But hey, drill if it makes you feel better. As for how much oil we can get from other offshore sites, I don't know. Somehow I doubt it'll significantly reduce the price of gasoline especially when you consider that demand continues to increase at an exponential rate. China and India don't help either. If we could use cheaply oil shale which is abundant in Utah and Colorado, then our problems would be solved for a while, but good luck.

Nuclear would be great, but Nevada doesn't like the idea of putting waste in their backyards, and Utah doesn't want to be a temporary dumping spot either. Furthermore, other states don't even want a nuclear power plant in their backyards because of fear of another meltdown or whatever. I often drive by a half-completed plant here in the Northwest that will likely never be completed which in my opinion is too bad, but there's really no way I can see of calming public fears.

Much as I like wind and solar power where possible, I don't think they can provide enough power for our energy needs. Coal might work, but I think nuclear is superior in terms of overall cost, environmental impact, and sustainability. Sure it impacts the environment a bit, but so do solar and wind.

[_Droopy]

Last I checked, drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge would barely provide enough oil for 1 year if that were our only source. It'll probably take 100 years to get it all so it'll give us 1% per year for a while until you take into account our exponential increase in demand over that time. But hey, drill if it makes you feel better. As for how much oil we can get from other offshore sites, I don't know. Somehow I doubt it'll significantly reduce the price of gasoline especially when you consider that demand continues to increase at an exponential rate. China and India don't help either. If we could use cheaply oil shale which is abundant in Utah and Colorado, then our problems would be solved for a while, but good luck.

DOI estimates there are many billions of barrels of oil in the area. Anwar itself is only the tip of a very vast petroleum iceberg (somewhere between 9 and 16.000.000.000 barrels in Anawar's coastal plane alone, and this is estimated recoverable oil). In any case, Anwar is only one blip on a very big continent, where estimtes are along the lines of several trillion barrels recoverable from liquid reserves, tar sands, and coal (yes, we can make gasoline out of coal).

Keep in mind that proven oil reserves are a historically poor indicter of actual oil reserves. New sources continue to be found all the time. The U.S. has right now, I believe, about 40 years of oil left. These are proven reserves, and do not take into account new finds. World reserves probably give us about a century and a half of petroleum. However, new finds are being made all the time. There are vast oil reserves know to exist in Utah. A huge new find has recently been made in Albania. The total quantity available in North America, Alaska, and the Arctic is completely unknown. When you combine known reserves with the potential reserves (based upon what has actually happened throughout history: as we drill and search we always find more), I've heard estimates of up to three centuries of oil before we ever conceivable "run out". Tar sands, oil shales, and coal are not included in normal estimates of oil we have left when you hear alarmist hand wringing in the mainstream media.

Keep in mind too that there are thousands of wells in America that were shut down after the oil spill hysteria in the late sixties and early seventies that are still about half full. Our old reserves aren't used up yet.

Nuclear would be great, but Nevada doesn't like the idea of putting waste in their backyards, and Utah doesn't want to be a temporary dumping spot either.

NIMBY, NIMBY, NIMBY. They're going to have to get over it. Or keep troops stationed in the Middle East for all eternity.

Furthermore, other states don't even want a nuclear power plant in their backyards because of fear of another meltdown or whatever.

The only meltdown that's ever occurred was the Chernobyl meltdown, which occurred because of serious design flaws.

I often drive by a half-completed plant here in the Northwest that will likely never be completed which in my opinion is too bad, but there's really no way I can see of calming public fears.

Education, which will involve the complete overhaul of the public school system. The other thing would be to influence as many people as possible to just turn off the mainstream media and give it up. Its a dubious source of information for just about everything and conflates reporting with editorial content to the extent that its no longer possible to disentangle the two without substantial personal study after the fact.

Much as I like wind and solar power where possible, I don't think they can provide enough power for our energy needs. Coal might work, but I think nuclear is superior in terms of overall cost, environmental impact, and sustainability. Sure it impacts the environment a bit, but so do solar and wind.

You're right on here. I plan to install a wind turbine on my property next year, as back up and as a means to lower my electric bill as close to zero as possible over time. However, as a mass application, this is a complete boondoggle.

[_Angus McAwesome]

OK well, no need to play conceptual or semantic games. Try this: no new nuclear power plants have been licensed or orderd in thirty years. The one you mention was initiated when I was in Junior High School.

Seriously, do you even bother to learn about something before you open mouth to comment on it?

However, on September 22, 2005 it was announced that two sites had been selected to receive new power reactors (exclusive of the new power reactor scheduled for Idaho National Laboratory) and two other utilities have plans for new reactors.[7] There has also been an application for an early site permit at Exelon's Clinton Nuclear in Clinton, Illinois to install another reactor as well as a reactor restart at the Tennessee Valley Authority Browns Ferry nuclear station.[8]

On September 25, 2007, South Texas Project filed the application for a Combined Construction and Operating License (COL). Two new GE-Hitachi ABWRs will be built adjacent to the existing PWRs.[9] This is the first application for a new nuclear plant in the US for nearly 30 years.[citation needed] This was followed in October, 2007 by TVA and NuStart filing for a COL for two Westinghouse AP1000s to be built at Bellefonte in Hollywood, Alabama.[10]

In 2007, the Nuclear Energy Institute even started an advertising campaign to increase public support of nuclear power.[11]

As of April 2008, the NRC is expecting 23 COL applications for a total of 34 new plants.[12]

However, MidAmerican Energy Company has decided to "end its pursuit of a nuclear power plant in Payette County, Idaho."[13] MidAmerican cited cost as the primary factor in their decision.

In April 2008 Southern Company signed an engineering and procurement contract with Westinghouse and Shaw Group for two AP1000s to be built at Vogtle in Georgia.[14] This is the first construction contract for a new nuclear power plant in the US to be signed since 1978.

Nope, not a single license issued or order placed in the last thirty years. Oh, wait...

They've already issued several licenses for new nuclear generation sites and contracts to build the reactors in the last three years. You were saying, Droopy?

Fine. That was my own neologism.

No, that was you being a pretentious twit by trying to impress me with big words and failing hard.

And here we come to the great big fat Greek blach blah blah TO LONG;DIDN'T READ

Seriously, can you stop projecting your political insecurities? Did a free range MoveOn.org member try to beat you with a Green Peace pamphlet or something? Are you completely incapable of making an argument that doesn't consist of some ridiculous red herring about your political bias?

[_GoodK]

Seriously, can you stop projecting your political insecurities? Did a free range MoveOn.org member try to beat you with a Green Peace pamphlet or something? Are you completely incapable of making an argument that doesn't consist of some ridiculous red herring about your political bias?

With all due respect, this is a dumb series of questions. You should know better.