• Nantucket’s Cape Wind Whips Up Hypocrisy

The Nantucket Massachusetts Cape Wind plans to built the first U.S. offshore wind park are blowing some toxic waste to the surface of the broad zeal to create “green” industries. These toxins are not of the materially harmful kind, but consist of all the pretentions at the core of too much human self-indulgence floating around the quagmire of the green energy movement.

The planned 130 wind turbine forest covering 24 sq. miles, which is intended to become a symbol of alternative energy on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, could also become an enormous subsidy magnet, sucking $731 million from taxpayers, before any long term costs are estimated. The “money” in such projects is in “building” these blights on the landscape, and then heading out of town because they have historically never proven to either work or be comparatively efficient when measured against other energy sources. Nevertheless, the irony of the Cape Wind debate rests in the reaction it has received from the wealthier Massachusetts residents, lead by the Kennedy family.

After the recent push from the White House and Congressional Democrats for Cap and Trade legislation, and for a Copenhagen Agreement, it is ironic that the Kennedy clan and its Massachusetts friends are campaigning against the Cape Wind project. It seems, quite justifiably, that the blue bloods don’t want any unsightly giant wind turbines disturbing their idyllic paradise, and would rather not have them distract from the expansive views visible from their oceanfront weekend mansions. The farm would be visible from Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. They are using the obviously suspect rationalizations for their dissenting views, including the concern for wildlife, and the danger to air and sea navigation. They would evidently be much happier if the windmills disadvantaged some other corner of the population, even as they profess support for them generally.

The hypocrisy here is that they can’t bring themselves to speak against the sham that is the building of windmill farms. The moneyed Massachusetts residents who have controlled that State’s politics for two generations cannot bring themselves to admit that this windmill project would be unviable, producing electricity at approximately twice the current wholesale prices (Minerals Management Service (MMS) Draft Environmental Impact Statement), or that such windmill farms are notoriously inconsistent, unreliable, and expensive to maintain. Currently the money is in building the farms, and not in their successful energy contribution to the grid over the long term.

There is ample evidence that such systems create cash sinks that do not benefit any progress toward renewable energy sources, which is now forcing Europeans to scale back on their windmill investments. Massachusetts blue bloods will rest self-righteously in the comfortable feint that advocating windmills plays to the politically correct, politically lucrative, and presently financially rewarding clean-energy movement, but, “Hide these windmills somewhere far away, and not in my backyard.”

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• The Obama Nobel Is Not About Peace

We have suffered a week of apoplexy having endured a bombardment of reasons offered to justify a Nobel Prize awarded for expectations and promises rather than results. Our rationality has been addled as all corners of the MSM meandered through fantastic rationalizations. All appear to have missed the mark. The ideologically motivated radicals dominating the Norwegian Nobel Committee, are not seeking peace in the world, but are making a down payment on fortification for their own agenda. The United States and Canada will pay dearly if this agenda materializes.

Let’s first dispel any doubt that the offered reasons for awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace prize were ungenuine. He hadn’t warmed the king sized bed in the White House when he was nominated, which means that any real evaluation of his authentication as a Nobel awardee, other than the oratory of his campaign, was impossible. In the end, the Nobel Committee stated that it, “… attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” Reality and common sense in both Norway and the White House seem to have vacated the premises.

Promises made by politicians are for electioneering, and they rarely see daylight. Remember when Obama made a bold and firm commitment that he would pull out of Iraq if he were made President? That was a defining and differentiating moment in the race to the Oval Office. Did he do what he committed to do? Are some of his phantasmagorical promises also the delusions of the Norwegian Nobel Committee? We will find an answer in the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit to be held in early December.

140 nations will meet in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012, with a global deal supposedly intended to limit CO2 emissions, reduce the destruction of rainforests, and help developing countries to become low-carbon economies. On the surface, the publicly claimed intentions of cleaning up our emissions from our air, our garbage from the oceans, and our toxins from the soil are lofty objectives very deserving of acclamation. The reality that will arise from the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference will prove to be something altogether different. What is to become the “Copenhagen Agreement,” will in fact be the largest international redistribution of wealth ever undertaken. The Earth and our environment will enjoy no benefit.

On December 10, Obama will receive his award in Oslo, just in time to energize the “Copenhagen” agenda. Whether or not he shows up at the UN meeting, the ideological intensions and expectations have been air freighted in the form a Nobel Prize. The Nobel awarded to Obama is a very personal stimulation to procure his support and therefore the financial commitment of the U.S. to a blueprint claiming to save the world.

The Copenhagen meeting in December will require that the United States and Canada annually transfer billions of dollars to the developing world as “climate debt” for past transgressions in their emissions of CO2. A key element in the penalization process will be the degree to which a developed country meets an allocated allowable emission schedule. Countries like the U.S. and Canada will have a tougher time than most, since it is always the last 10% or 20% that is the most difficult and most expensive to “scrub” from your emissions when you have already done more than most to clean up your own mess.

Developing countries will be using starting points with disastrous emission levels, comparable to that of the U.S. and Canada over a century ago. Minor improvements will give poor countries a leg-up on developed countries. Industrialized countries will in effect be penalized for already having well equipped, technologically advanced infrastructures. Canada in particular will very likely incur the highest penalties per capita since it is a net energy producer with production requiring extensive energy consumption, and it endures cold winters and hot, humid summers. This is not to say that every industrial sector should not strive to reduce its carbon footprint. We all should. The conundrum rests in what methodology to apply to the process and to enforcement given the reality that much has already been done by developed countries, and more is planned since all levels of society have become conscious of the need to reduce pollution.

The transfer payments from developed nations to poor ones will be made through purchases of unused “credits,” as well as through outright payments which will be made over and above the current billions distributed as foreign aid. Developing countries will be compensated for “lost opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity,” and the funds are to be divinely distributed by the United Nations. The UN will also be the arbiter of good taste in all things CO2 emissionable, including all approvals of emission scrubbing plans and the ensuing allocations of emission credits. The agreement also leaves room for developing countries to do absolutely nothing on emissions should they feel they are not receiving enough technological and financial support from developed countries. How is that for a backdoor to escape adaptation?

An invigorated and supremely powerful United Nations is in the offing. The principal justification for turning the UN into a true world power is this: The most advanced industrialized countries are responsible for global warming which in turn is responsible for the drought and famine being suffered by the poorest nations, ergo, the most developed countries owe cash to the undeveloped ones. How more obvious can the planners be than allowing rich countries to buy offsets rather than make emission cuts at home?

Kyoto’s good intensions have mutated into a politically charged Copenhagen draft agreement for a global plan to redistribute wealth to the tune of an estimated $1.4 trillion over the coming decade, which in and of itself will have little or no impact on pollution. The agreement’s impact on climate change will be even more amorphic, nevertheless, we can expect an abundance of fear mongering on the road to ratification.

Obama’s upcoming acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize and the invisible strings attached to it, while he is quite entitled to claim it, along with his plans for Cap and Trade, may prove to be an enormously expensive exercise for all taxpayers on this continent. The “Copenhagen” supporters on the Nobel Committee, on the other hand, are counting on it.

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• Dear Mr. President: Thanks Again For Cap And Trade

To The Office Of The President Of The United States,

Dear Mr. Obama

We are the heads of a few of your largest constituents, including Dow, GE and DuPont. This letter represents our sentiments in wishing to express our gratitude for your and Ms. Pelosi’s efforts on our behalf. We thank you, our shareholders thank you, and certainly all of us look forward to contributing to your Presidential Library, once you leave office, if we did not sufficiently contribute already prior to the election.

We can appreciate that neither yourself nor your dear friends in Congress have had time to read the new Bill that opens: “A BILL - To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.” This Bill is very, very, very long and boring. It is also very complex. We conceived it and structured it in such way that the fewer the readers, the less editing would take place. We therefore anticipate that its passage will be swift. The sooner that train leaves the station, the more impossible its progress will be to reverse. It would also not be advantageous if the irrationality, and fear surrounding humanity’s hand in the process of global warming were to subside. Now, is an opportune time to strike.

Attaching the name “Cap and Trade” to this whole business has been a stroke of genius. No one really understands what it all means, and the media believes everything you tell them, so keep plugging it, and keep promoting the “reduction in CO2” stuff. That works really well in LA. Have you seen the air out there? Terrible. Terrible, or "turbull" as Charles Barkley would say. We are all thrilled that you have successfully reconstructed the original intent of CO2 reduction, into an energy consumption reduction program. We knew you could do it.

The impact on consumption reduction will, in our view, be minimal, and fortunately, that is not our objective. We wish you much luck in managing this monster, and in building an administration capable of verifying such things as the veracity of corporately claimed offsets. This Bill is so complex that it will provide endless possibilities for abuse and excesses, and we can smell the fraud stinking up the air already. As you know, a transparent system such as a simple graduated carbon tax, paralleled with targeted caps on emissions, would not have been as financially beneficial for us. Not even close.

We are well aware that most of our smaller brethren in the business will get put out to pasture as a result of their inability to move off-shore quickly enough, or by the fact that they will not be able to afford the carbon pollution permits. We, on the other hand, already have unregulated facilities around the world to which we can reallocate resources at a moment’s notice. Our competitors will also not have our advantage of receiving significant Cap and Trade credits based on our being able to provide all necessary products supporting this bill, from solar panels to wind mills in the sky. Our smaller competitors will also be unable to sustain the sheer costs of managing the government’s bureaucratic intrusion into their affairs, as it deploys armies of newly hired climate science experts to distribute and oversee capping and trading of carbon dioxide emissions.

We anticipate much higher costs in the manufacture of many alternate energy sources, such as solar energy absorption cells, and this will impact the expansion of solar cell farms, but well, we have no choice.

The Bill will be very effective in rendering the cost of any carbon-based energy unaffordable through overwhelming taxation. That should help you refill the government coffers somewhat, although the hole you are digging for American taxpayers is becoming rather considerable. Households across the country will bear the brunt of the costs, through higher product prices and a heavier tax burden, but most people seem very accepting of a “price” for reducing climate change. Even if most don’t believe that they impact climate, they still feel that the air needs cleaning. We are unsure, however, how taxpayers will feel about being mandated into financing the adoption of efficient technologies overseas. They will probably not be thrilled with paying to prevent the clear-cutting of the Amazon, for example, at a time when many households are barely paying their food bills. We, on the other hand, will not be affected, whatever reactions surface on that front, although a couple of us feel bad for our buddies running operations like aluminum, or steel mills. They are in for some tough times.

We note that some of our other friends on Wall Street are very preoccupied, as we write this letter, coming up with new and extremely creative financial tools which they expect to launch upon the Bill’s passing. Those boys have amazing ways of getting in on any game with the potential of throwing off billions in cash. They look forward to a whole new set of opportunities opening up for them, replacing the ones eclipsed by the recent devastating financial compression. Listening to some of them, one might conclude that they have been holding séances with Jeffrey Skilling of Enron fame.

We are anxious to be in receipt of our free Trade Allowances, but most of all, we are excited with the anticipation of enjoying astronomical growth for many years. In passing, we should thank you for having allowed, and fuelled with cash, firms like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley to become even bigger, and more powerful than they were before the financial down-turn. This action set a tremendous precedent we look forward to duplicating in our industries. If you thought “too big to fail” applied to these giants before the crash, wait until you see how big a few of us get in the next five years.

We have one last request if we can be so bold. Could you repeat as often as possible to the Nation that this Bill will not cost over $3,000 per household each year, and that much like the national objective of being carbon neutral, so too the cost will be, … “neutral.” Explain to America that it is just a methodology for keeping track of excessive energy consumers, and polluters. Perfect, don’t you think? They’ll all buy it. The media will promote that theme for you.

We will continue to postulate assertively on the need for battling global warming, and look forward to your persistent oratory on getting this momentous Bill passed into law.

Sincerely.
Your Friendly Benefactors

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