Switching off the lights

Today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette contains an article about the planned closure of three power generation plants in western Pennsylvania, and eight overall, over the next several years. The three coal-fired plants in my area represent 1,387 megawatts of capacity. They are owned by GenOn Energy.

Yes, these are old facilities. Some of the generating units are as old as 60 years. According to GenOn's own press release the closures of the eight generating stations is "because forecasted returns on investments needed to comply with environmental regulations are insufficient." These regulations are ones enacted since the beginning of the Obama presidency.

Naturally, environmentalists are cheering. These "dirty" coal plants are going the way of the dodo. Their thick black belching smoke won't be poisoning us anymore. As coincidence would have it, I had to drive past GenOn's New Castle Generating Station today; it's a 330MW capacity plant, and is on the closure list. What did I see?

The Green Jobs Answer Man

From the Manhattan Institute and the wonderful Andrew Klavan:

Solyndra Cronyism in Plain Sight?

I've been following the coverage of the Solyndra scandal, particularly from Michelle Malkin and HotAir. I'd like to make one observation of the Obama administration's corrupt entanglement with this "green jobs" and taxpayer-dollar sinkhole that I don't believe I've seen anywhere else.

There have been brief mentions of Solyndra's products during the firestorm over the bankruptcy, FBI raids, and ensuing investigations. One thing that I thought I had heard about their solar cells sparked a memory of Obama regime past, so today I took a look at Solyndra's website, which is still up, to see if my recollections were correct. Turns out, they were.

How Conservatives Need to Respond to Climate Change

Three Simple Points to combat Enviro-Statists:

FIRST - the science is NOT settled and there are hundreds of not thousands of scientists who are skeptical at anthropogenic climate change.

SECOND - we are not arguing that climate change does not occur. During the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, "essentially all of Canada and extended roughly to the Missouri River and Ohio Rivers [sic], and eastward to New York City" was covered by ice. It's not now. Why? Climate change, stupid! We are only contending that the human race and human activity does not have a significant impact on global climate. This is a good point to get in a jab that Halliburton must be really destructive if they managed to change the climate 20,000 years ago.

THIRD - it is absurd and illogical to think that human activity is a large contributor to climate change because of the relative amounts of human energy expenditure into the environment and the amount of energy that we're bombarded with by the SUN. In one year, the Sun delivers 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) that is absorbed by the Earth. If you're not familiar with the SI prefix "exa", the entire joule count written out is 3,850,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. For debate purposes, that's 385 with 22 zeros after it. In 2005, "Primary Energy Use" by the human race was a mere 487 EJ. What does this mean?

It takes the Sun a mere 66 MINUTES to deliver the same amount of energy to the Earth that the entire human race expended in ONE YEAR (2005).

In ONE YEAR, the Sun delivers more energy to the Earth than the human race will EVER EXTRACT from all non-renewable resources: coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium (i.e. nuclear power).

Those facts, naturally, will cause an Enviro-Statist to start screaming, "Solar power! Solar power!". It is then time to mention Solyndra.

(Edit: 1:44 PM - cleaned up the lead in to point 3. Apologies for the poor sentence I originally wrote)

Getting Exactly What You've Asked For

I happened to be at my parents' house in New Jersey this weekend, and I decided to risk assured infuriation by reading their copy of The New York Times. I wasn't disappointed. One article in particular jumped off the page at me, and it's a wonderful demonstration of how the willingness of "We the People" to cede our liberty and sovereignty to government makes all of our lives worse.

The piece is entitled "Turning to Windmills, but Resistance Lingers" and it is dated September 13, 2009.

It's the story of Wendie Howland of Bourne, MA. Based on the introductory paragraph, "Wendie Howland grows her own food and heats her water with rooftop solar panels. She drives a Prius with a bumper sticker that boasts 'One less S.U.V.'," I'm going to go out on a strong limb and assume that:

1) She's a good, caring liberal.
2) She voted for President Obama.
3) She has enthusiastically supported environmental groups and regulations.

Well, Mrs. Howland and her husband have been prevented by government regulation from erecting a wind turbine on their own private property so they can generate some or all of their own electricity. It's a disgrace, but it's exactly what liberals have asked for time and time again by placing in the hands of government what we can and cannot do with our liberty and private property.

Ms. Howland's neighbors "overwhelmingly approved" a bylaw regulating windmills in 2007. This is "collectivism" at its worst, especially since "To Mrs. Howland, the town's claim that a windmill would hurt the character of her neighborhood was especially galling. None of her closest neighbors objected, she said."

Now, the usual liberal response to an anti-regulatory comment by a conservative usually descends into rhetorical slams like "you don't believe in a clean environment" or "you only care about big business' interests and not that of the people", or worse.

I support Mr. & Mrs. Howland's desire for a wind turbine because it is the conservative thing to do! It is their private property. How they want to use their property, and their wealth to improve upon it, is their business and no one else's.

Here's how a scenario like this should play out, taking both self and community interest into consideration:

1) I want to erect a wind turbine to generate electricity for myself. It is worth the cost to me because I believe that I'm going to get more value out of the transaction than what I'm spending. That value could be in lowering my electricity bill, believing that I'm being better to the environment, whatever - the value is what is important; I'm acting in my own self-interest.

2) Since it is in my own self-interest to care about my neighbors, I inform them that I'd like to build the turbine. This gives them the option to object, raise concerns, or otherwise act on their own self-interests.

3) Now, I'm putting my "neighbor" hat on. What am I worried about? How is this going to affect me? If the thing falls over, where's it going to land? Perhaps I don't want them to erect their turbine, but what can I do to mitigate the situation? I can ask for financial consideration. I can ask them if they have an insurance rider covering the turbine and its effects. I can ask if I can share in the electricity generated - either for my consent or for contribution of my own wealth -since it can't practically be stored. I can ask for a trade or concession as simple as, "Hey, whenever I need to cut my grass can I use your tractor?"

4) Back to being the turbine erector. Now that I've talked to the neighbors, I can decide if the costs of my project - including that of satisfying my neighbors and community - still provide the value I'm looking for. Maybe I go ahead, maybe I don't. Perhaps my neighbors still aren't happy and seek other recourse if we can't come to a mutually agreeable, beneficial, and profitable solution.

That is liberty. That is freedom. That is caring about one's neighbors out of one's own self-interest.

And that, by the way, is capitalism. Trading wealth for value in one's own self-interest to generate more wealth, be it material or otherwise, is the essence of economics.

It's also the essence of our unalienable right, as Jefferson wrote, to "the pursuit of Happiness."

I hope the Howlands eventually get their freedom to use their wealth and property as they want to, even though by what I'm assuming their political and regulatory stances have been, they got exactly what they asked for time and time again in being denied their freedom.

Celebrate Human Achievement Hour

This video is AWESOME. If it doesn't make you stand up and cheer and celebrate Human (and American) greatness and ingenuity, well, just go shut off your lights tonight at 8:30.




With thanks to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Earth Hour - How I'll be celebrating

You may have heard or read about Earth Hour, which will take place tomorrow between 8 and 9 PM at your local time. The gist of this episode of environmental inanity is to shut off all of your electricity consuming devices as a purely symbolic gesture (even the proponents of this nonsense acknowledge it's a meaningless effort) to raise awareness about "climate change", "global warming", and the complete myth that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

So, I hereby pledge that I will celebrate Earth Hour tomorrow, March 29, 2008 between the hours of 2000 and 2100 Eastern Daylight Time by:

1) Insuring that every single electric light in my house is turned on.
2) Running both cars at idle (for at least part of the hour)
3) Turning on and running as many of our appliances as possible during the hour.
4) Excercising, so I can generate even more carbon dioxide on my own.
5) Finally, I'll light a nice cheerful wood fire in my fireplace.

In short, I am going to do everything I can to increase my so-called "carbon footprint". I encourage you to do the same. Stand up for rationality over pseudo-science and manufactured crises.

And never forget that environmentalism isn't about saving the environment; it's about destroying capitalism, and thus freedom.

Ooooo, I'm scared now

The Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have moved their "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to "midnight" - i.e. the end of the world - it sits now at 23:55.

I'm agreed that we all should be worried about the possibility (likelihood?) of nations such as Iran and North Korea having nuclear weapons, but I really turn them off when I see:

Global warming presents a dire threat to human civilization that is second only
to nuclear weapons.

Yeah, right. Their clock will now include ridiculous fears of climate change in calculating the time to the supposed end of the world. Whatever.