‘Outside the Green Box’: New book unmasks ‘sustainable development’ fallacies
By Robert Bradley Jr. — May 8, 2017
“Energy consumption is not a villain. Nations that consume the most energy per person discharge the lowest level of air and water pollutants per person. Low-cost energy provides economic growth and generates capital for pollution control.”
Editor note: Steve Goreham has written another primer of note. The author of Climatism!: Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic (2010) and The Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change (2012), Goreham has just published a fun, readable book with great political timing.
The audience for Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development is not only any classroom studying energy choices and related public policies. Goreham is targeting the green consultant. The back cover explains:
Your firm spends millions to be environmentally sustainable. Carbon credits, renewable energy, ethanol fuel, and electric vehicles demonstate your company’s commitment. Fluorescent light bulbs, organic foods, and a hybrid car may be part of your personal commitement. But contrary to what your green consultant tells you, these and other sustainable measures provide little positive benefit to Earth’s environment.
But more so. When it comes to energy, the eco-benefits of renewables are illusory and have distinctive environmental costs.
MasterResource is pleased to publish an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Outside the Green Box, available from Amazon or at stevegoreham.com.
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Much of government policy, academic thought, and public opinion stands on fears created and promulgated by environmental sustainable development. The philosophy that humans are too many, too polluting, climate destroying, and profligate wasters of natural resources holds today’s society in a powerful psychological grip. Thousands of energy and environmental laws are justified on these misconceptions. Let’s briefly review why these ideas are incorrect.
‘Dying Green’: Green burials are a growing trend in Colorado
BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — We all know what it means to live green, but what about dying green?
Less costly goodbyes known as green burials are growing in popularity in Colorado and a new Lafayette business is helping people die as naturally as possible, with minimal impact to the earth.
“It’s a whole new approach to end of life care,” explained Prescott Knock, the executive director of the Natural Funeral.
Those who chose to live green also want to die green, which is how the green burial idea was born.
“Many of the people that are socially conscious, environmentally conscious really appreciate that alternative,” said Knock.
Knock’s new venture in the heart of downtown Lafayette will be one of the first in the state to help people die green. The Natural Funeral plans to open this summer at 102 West Chester Street after renovations are completed on the existing buildings.
What is a green burial?
The burials look more like something straight out of the wild west than your traditional cemetery.
“The grass is going to remain tall, we’re going to pull weeds mechanically by hand,” said Roselawn Cemetery Supervisor Kevin Williams. “We leave the ground more mounded.”
A green burial or natural funeral means your body is placed directly into the ground in a pine casket or shroud.
“When a pine casket goes into the ground it’s just going to biodegrade,” explained Luc Nadeau, the owner of Nature’s Casket, who makes pine caskets out of his backyard workshop in Longmont.…
Why India and Pakistan Are Renewing Their Love Affair with Coal
One nation is shirking emissions targets and the other is investing in more coal plants—but with America as a role model, that’s hardly surprising.
Much of the world agrees: burning coal is bad, and we ought to do less of it.
But not everyone sings from that sheet, including Pakistan’s Water and Power Ministry. As part of a large infrastructure investment project with China, it’s committed to spending $15 billion on as many as 12 new coal power plants over the next 15 years. Reuters reports that the figure is almost half of the $33 billion being invested into energy projects as part of the initiative, and that around 75 percent of the extra generation capacity will come from new coal plants.
The government insists that the new plants will use technology to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. But the nation’s minister for planning, development and reform, Ahsan Iqbal, sounds downright Trumpian in his view of the nation’s future energy policy: “Pakistan must tap [its] vast underground reserves of 175 billion tonnes of coal, adequate to meet the country’s energy needs for several decades, for powering the country’s economic wheel, creating new jobs, and fighting spiking unemployment and poverty.”
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports (paywall) that India will fail to meet its own targets to reduce emissions from its coal power plants. India’s struggle to clean up its energy act is well-known. But it’s currently unable to meet its own power demands, so it’s not really that practical to shut down plants—and given that no penalties will be imposed for failing to reduce emissions, there’s little incentive to do so.
To anyone who would criticize the move, Piyush Goyal, India’s power minister, had this to say: “India is not a polluter,” he told the Financial Times. “It’s America and the western world that has to first stop polluting.” There’s a grain of truth to that: America and Europe did a lot of coal burning during their development, and now have strong economies to leverage in order to clean up their acts. Developing countries aren’t so lucky. And developed countries still emit far more greenhouse gases per citizen than India and Pakistan. As of 2013 the annual per capita CO2 emissions of India and Pakistan were 1.59 and 0.85 metric tons respectively. In the U.S., the figure is 16.39 metric tons.
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Europe’s Biggest Solar Company Goes Up In Smoke
Germany’s SolarWorld, once Europe’s biggest solar power equipment group, said on Wednesday it would file for insolvency, overwhelmed by Chinese rivals who had long been a thorn in the side of founder and CEO Frank Asbeck, once known as “the Sun King”. A renewed wave of cheap Chinese exports, caused by reduced ambitions in China to expand solar power generation, was too much to bear for the group, which made its last net profit in 2014. —Reuters, 11 May 2017
The company once hailed as Europe’s largest solar panel producer filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, blaming cheap Chinese panels for flooding the market. SolarWorld is only the latest bankrupt solar company to blame the Chinese. U.S.-based Suniva Inc. filed for bankruptcy in April, also citing stiff competition from Chinese solar panel makers. The solar industry’s biggest problem is likely the very mechanism that led to its rise: lucrative subsidies. European subsidies, mostly in Germany, led to a massive expansion of the companies green energy industry, but eventually subsidies became their undoing as cheaper solar panels from China began to win out. –Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 11 May 2017
More than 100 coal power plants are in various stages of planning or development in 11 African countries outside of South Africa — more than eight times the region’s existing coal capacity. Africa’s embrace of coal is in part the result of its acute shortage of power. –Jonathan W. Rosen, National Geographic, 10 May 2017
1) Europe’s Biggest Solar Company Goes Up In Smoke
Reuters, 11 May 2017
2) Largest US Solar Panel Maker Files For Bankruptcy After Receiving $206 Million In Subsidies
The Daily Caller, 11 May 2017
3) African Nations To Build More Than 100 New Coal Power Plants
National Geographic, 10 May 2017
4) Why India And Pakistan Are Renewing Their Love Affair With Coal
MIT Technology Review, 3 May 2017
5) Al Gore Personally Pleads With Trump to Stay in the Paris Climate Agreement
Daily Caller, 10 May 2017
6) ‘Apple Of Oil’ Says New Permian Shale Wells ‘Shattered’ Records
Investor’s Business Daily, 8 May 2017
7) Matt Ridley: Wind Turbines Are Neither Clean Nor Green
The Spectator, 11 May 2017 …
Worldwide: Over 1,200 laws aim to change weather — need more to limit downpours, seas, storms
Welcome to paleolithic politics: in this version, the witchdoctors are syndicated and with lap tops. OSLO (Reuters) – Nations around the world have adopted more than 1,200 laws to curb climate change… Patricia Espinosa, the U.N.’s climate change chief, … said the findings were “cause for optimism”… Because more laws are always good.
Source: Worldwide: Over 1,200 laws aim to change weather — need more to limit downpours, seas, storms…
African Nations Plan More Than 100 New Coal Power Plants
More than 100 coal power plants are in various stages of planning or development in 11 African countries outside of South Africa — more than eight times the region’s existing coal capacity. Africa’s embrace of coal is in part the result of its acute shortage of power.
Source: African Nations Plan More Than 100 New Coal Power Plants…
Trump Loses Senate Vote To Repeal Obama-Era Methane Rule Thanks To McCain
Would have saved taxpayers $1.8 billion
Source: Trump Loses Senate Vote To Repeal Obama-Era Methane Rule Thanks To McCain…
Trump Delays Decision on Paris Climate Accord Until After G7 Meeting
President to first meet with G-7 leaders in Italy before rendering final verdict President Donald Trump won’t make a decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change until after he meets with G-7 leaders later this month, the White House’s top spokesman said Tuesday.
Source: Trump Delays Decision on Paris Climate Accord Until After G7 Meeting…
3 Republicans Defect To Reject Bill To Repeal Obama-Era Methane Limits — Interior Dept. says it will scrap regs anyway
By Alexander C. Kaufman
Republicans’ bid to roll back an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions from drilling rigs on public lands narrowly lost in the Senate on Wednesday after three GOP senators voted against the repeal.
In a 49-51 vote, the Senate preserved the rule, strengthened after last November’s election, that limited the amount of the powerful greenhouse gas methane that can be vented and burned from oil and gas extraction sites on federal lands.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) were expected to vote against the rule, but the surprise defection of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) helped tilt the scales on a vote environmentalists are hailing as a rare victory over President Donald Trump’s assault on policies that address climate change.
“Improving the control of methane emissions is an important public health and air quality issue, which is why some states are moving forward with their own regulations requiring greater investment in recapture technology,” McCain said in a statement. “While I am concerned that the BLM rule may be onerous, passage of the resolution would have prevented the federal government, under any administration, from issuing a rule that is ‘similar,’ according to the plain reading of the Congressional Review Act.”
Obama Kicks Off First Foreign Speech With An Astonishingly False Statement On Global Warming
By Michael Bastasch
Former President Barack Obama told those gathered at an agricultural conference that man-made global warming was already impacting agriculture on a global scale, shrinking crop yields and raising food prices.
“Our changing climate is already making it more difficult to produce food,” Obama said at the Seeds & Chips conference in Milan, Italy Tuesday, according to The New York Times.
“We’ve already seen shrinking yields and rising food prices,” the former president said in his first speech outside the U.S. since leaving office in January.
But is global warming already hurting agriculture? There’s not a lot of evidence for that claim.
In fact, 2016 was a record year for crop yields, which have basically doubled since 2007.
Production of wheat, coarse grains and rice hit record levels in 2016, according to United Nations data. Cereal production is set to shrink 0.4 percent in 2017 “from the 2016 record high,” but “supplies are likely to remain large with next season’s cereal ending stocks remaining close to their record high opening levels,” the UN reports.
As for food prices, they’re well below recent highs hit in 2010. UN data shows the inflation-adjusted food index — the average of five commodity price indices — is just below where it was in 1965. the food price index peaked around 1975.
Credit: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Some scientists predict global warming will shrink crop yields as extreme weather events, like droughts, storms and floods become more common. Crop production may improve marginally over higher latitudes, but countries at mid-and-lower latitudes could see food supplies crumble.
The Guardian reported “across Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could decline by as much as 50% by 2020,” summarizing UN findings.
Other experts say global warming, at least in the near-term, will be good for agriculture since increased carbon dioxide will boost plant growth. Current evidence suggests a “global greening” trend from increased CO2 from fossil fuel combustion.…