The U.S. Must Choose Ethical Energy Over Conflict Energy
Climate Depot Editorial
On October 3, during the first presidential debate with President Barack Obama, Republican nominee Mitt Romney declared his intention to make “North America energy independent.”
Romney continued: “Energy is critical, and the president pointed out correctly that production of oil and gas in the U.S. is up. But not due to his policies. In spite of his policies. Mr. President, all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land. On government land, your administration has cut the number of permits and license in half. If I’m president, I’ll double them. And also get the — the oil from offshore and Alaska. And I’ll bring that pipeline in from Canada.
And by the way, I like coal. I’m going to make sure we continue to burn clean coal. People in the coal industry feel like it’s getting crushed by your policies. I want to get America and North America energy independent, so we can create those jobs.”
Climate Depot Response: Gov. Romney’s carbon based energy goals are the moral and ethical choice for the United States. Extracting domestic energy from the U.S. and other parts of North America where human rights and environmental protection are markedly better than many other energy choices – is the ethical choice.
Limiting North American drilling, mining, pipelines and energy extraction can only mean more reliance on conflict energy from such places as the Middle East, Venezuela and China, where human rights and environmental protection may be less than desirable. See: Analysis: Obama Policies Making US More Dependent on Persian Gulf Oil
Not only is the U.S. importing carbon-based energy from countries with questionable human rights and environmental records — ie. conflict energy, but now we are also importing so-called renewable energy from these countries.
See: Obama Administration Caught Redistributing Stimulus Dollars to Chinese Solar Firms
America needs to choose ethical energy – both carbon based and so-called renewables from North America. It is long past the time that the U.S. continued to have a heavy reliance on conflict energy.
Related Links:
Obama Administration Caught Redistributing Stimulus Dollars to Chinese Solar Firms — ‘The Obama admin. used stimulus dollars to purchase Chinese solar panels – a clear …
Climate Depot’s report: Electric/Hybrid car industry loses power in the face of market reality and lack of consumer demand
This news round up contains a small sampling of recent Climate Depot coverage of Electric/Hybrid vehicle industry. Very few industries have fallen on hard times so quickly despite such massive government funding.
Plant that got $150M in taxpayer money to make Volt batteries furloughs workers — before a single battery has been produced! — ‘Workers at the Compact Power manufacturing facilities in Holland, Mich., run by LG Chem, have been placed on rotating furloughs, working only 3 weeks per month based on lack of demand for lithium-ion cells. The facility, which was opened in July 2010 with a groundbreaking attended by Obama, has yet to produce a single battery for the Chevrolet Volt, the troubled electric car from GM. The plant’s batteries also were intended to be used in Ford’s electric Focus.’
Electric carmaker Tesla Motors warns it will miss sales expectations — ‘Tesla has lost $660 million in last 14 quarters’ — ‘Tesla said the U.S. Dept of Energy agreed it could delay a third-quarter interest payment due on Tesla’s $465-million federal loan. But Tesla agreed to accelerate future payments on the loan. The company said it would seek to raise up to $147.6 million through a public offering to help repay the loan, which has now been amended four times’
‘Record’ Volt Sales? Not Really — GM Counts $159 Leases for an $89,000 Car — ‘Fully 2/3s of the ‘sales’ were leases, leaving around 925 cars that were truly sold. And this lease scam appears to have been going on since the Volt’s November 2010 launch’
Heavy discounts only way to sell Chevy Volts: ‘GM’s discounts on the Volt are more than four times the industry’s per-vehicle avg.’ — ‘It costs $60,000 to $75,000 to build a Volt, including development, manufacturing and raw materials…With a sticker price of $40,000, minus the $10,000 the company pays in incentives, GM gets roughly $30,000 for every Volt. So it could be losing at least $30,000 per car’
Wash. Post Shocker: ‘GM’s vaunted Volt is on the road to nowhere fast’ — ‘The basic theory— if you build them, customers will come — was a myth. And an expensive one, at that’ — WaPo Editorial Board: ‘No matter how you slice it, the American taxpayer has gotten precious little for the administration’s investment in battery-powered vehicles, in terms of permanent jobs or lower CO2 emissions. There is no market, or not much …
NYT: ‘In 1900, 34 percent of cars in New York, Boston and Chicago were powered by electric motors. Nearly half had steam engines. What happened?’
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Plant that got $150M in taxpayer money to make Volt batteries furloughs workers — before a single battery has been produced!
Fox News Excerpt: The 650,000-square-foot, $300 million facility was slated to produce 15,000 batteries per year, while creating hundreds of new jobs. But to date, only 200 workers are employed at the plant by by the South Korean company. Batteries for the Chevy Volts that have been produced have been made by an LG plant in South Korea.
The factory was partly funded by a $150 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. LG also received sizeable tax breaks from the local government, saving nearly $50 million in property taxes over 15 years and another $2.5 million annually in business taxes. Landing the factory was hailed as a coup when shovels first hit the ground.
“You are leading the way in showing how manufacturing jobs are coming right back here to the United States of America,” Obama told workers at the ground-breaking ceremony. “Our goal has never been to create a government program, but rather to unleash private-sector growth. And we’re seeing results.”
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Gore effect strikes again: As infamous warmists began a Climate Science Seminar in Minnesota last Friday, a local headline was ’14” of snow? Already? That’s cold’
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EPA Free to Gas Sick People: Court Denies TRO Against EPA for Human Testing Citing Jursidiction
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‘Low temperature records overwhelm highs in the USA this past week – where’s the media to tell us how this should be viewed?’
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Warmist Poll claims to find that the public believes in the extreme weather boogeyman
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Warmist Chris Mooney asks why political leaders are ignoring warmist Joe Romm — ‘Why Aren’t Politicians Listening to This Guy on Climate?’
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Chris Horner: ‘Actual headline today, Research: CO2 emissions go up when economy booms, drop when it doesn’t’ — ‘What’s next, sun and temps have relationship?’
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